Thiruvananthapuram: Like a torn kite that has very nearly touched the ground but is still kept floating by the breeze, the daily tally of fresh COVID-19 cases in Kerala gives the impression of a contagion at its last gasp. On Sunday, quite in keeping with the low single digit figures in the previous days, only two have tested positive; one each in Kannur and Kasaragod.
And both are foreign returnees, one from Abu Dhabi and the other from Dubai. With these two positive cases, the total confirmed cases in Kerala has crossed the 400 mark; now it is 401.
On the other hand, recovery has continued its buoyant upswing. As has been the trend in the last eight days, recovery far outstripped the new cases on Sunday, too. On the day, 13 had recovered, more than six times the new cases declared. Now, 270 or nearly 68 per cent of the total confirmed cases have survived the virus.
Of the 13 who shrugged off the virus on Sunday, eight are in Kasaragod, bringing down the total active cases in the northernmost district to 46. This also brings the district, which had 169 confirmed cases, almost level with Kannur, which now has 45 active cases.
Kannur's recovery had been relatively slow. If eight Kasaragod patients had recovered on Sunday, only three had recovered in Kannur. If 73 per cent of the infected had recovered in Kasaragod, the recovery rate for Kannur is only 47 per cent.
One each in Malappuram and Thrissur, too, had beaten back the virus. With the recovery recorded on Sunday, Thrissur becomes the third district in Kerala with zero COVID-19 cases; the district had 13 confirmed cases.
Middle East conundrum
Nonetheless, the continued emergence of positive cases among the quarantined foreign returnees has baffled health officials. Over 30 returnees have tested positive after April 7, the time when the WHO-prescribed maximum incubation period of the last person who landed in Kerala was supposed to end.
Officially, health officials have put up a brave front. "These people are not in the least infective, and are mostly asymptomatic. It is not a matter of worry," top experts Onmanorama talked to said.
However, two returnees based in Kozhikode's Edacherry who had tested positive after 27 and 28 days of their return had infected their entire families. Health experts now say that prolonged incubation period is also a sign that the viral load is negligible. Nonetheless, they have no convincing answer to the Edacherry factor. “I should be considered highly rare,” is what a top official said.
Re-prioritise testing
Even then some experts with the Health Department feel that all foreign returnees in quarantine should have been tested after they had completed 14 days in quarantine whether symptomatic or not. "It is still not too late. We now have 55,590 people under surveillance. At least 10 per cent of them would be foreign returnees. Let us test them on an emergency basis and, if they are found infected, we can swiftly isolate them in hospitals and quarantine their immediate contacts and test them," another top health official said.
Nonetheless, the current pattern of testing is a major hindrance. "Now we do a lot of tests on those admitted in hospitals. The ICMR protocol is that two back to back tests should show negative for a person to be discharged. This is both a waste of time and resources," the official said. “We should use the tests more on quarantined people than those in hospitals who have freed of their symptoms,” he added.
Home freedom
The quality of home quarantine is another matter of concern. Many of the foreign returnees, it has been found, mingle quite freely with their family members. The Health Department has specified that a person under home quarantine should have a bath-attached room and is not supposed to come out of that room. This is followed mostly in the breach.
"In some cases it has also been found that these returnees had started going out after 14 days, unaware that their quarantine period is 28 days," the health official said.
