Fresh COVID-19 cases continue to surge with 61 more reported on Sunday. Three of the last five days of the month had reported more than 60 fresh cases; on May 28 the numbers scaling a peak of 84.
Quite in step with the recent trend, Palakkad has reported the highest number of cases on the day, 12. This takes the active number of cases in the district to 140, the highest in the state.
Kasaragod has 10 new patients, Kannur has seven, Kollam and Alappuzha have six each, Thiruvananthapuram and Pathanamthitta have four each, Thrissur, Malappuram and Wayanad have three each, Kozhikode has two, and Ernakulam one.
Idukki, which has he lowest number of active cases (8), and Kottayam are the only districts with no new cases.
Kannur has 110 cases and Kasaragod, 82. Malappuram has the fourth highest number, 55, followed by Thrissur, 45 and Thiruvananthapuram, 42.
10 more hotspots
On Sunday, 10 more areas have been declared hotspots. Badaiadkka (ward 13) and Pilcode (Ward 8) in Kasaragod, Pallassana (Ward 15) and Puthunagaram (Ward 10) in Palakkad, Thalassery Municipality (wards 37 and 47) in Kannur, Panmana (wards 10 and 11) and Punalur Municipality (Ward 12). There are three more hotspots in Kollam - Kulathupuzha, Aryankavu and Thenmala - but there are no containment zones in these areas.
There are now 116 containment spots in Kerala.
Growing imports, growing infections
Of the new 61 cases, 20 had come from abroad (UAE - 8; Kuwait - 5; Oman - 4; Saudi Arabia - 1, Qatar - 1, Maldives - 1) and 37 had come from other states (Maharashtra - 20; Tamil Nadu - 6; Delhi - 5; Karnataka - 4; Gujarat and Rajasthan - one each).
Health minister K K Shylaja said in an official release said the remaining four had got infected through contact from imported cases; two each in Kollam and Palakkad.
However, one of the persons who got seeded through contact is a 58-year-old forest watcher who was on duty at Walayar check-post, Palakkad.
It is impossible to know from whom the watcher had got infected; the source would either be in home quarantine without any symptoms or could have been been declared positive and shifted to a hospital.
It appears that the watcher's is the sole positive among the sentinel surveillance sample results that were published on Sunday. No health worker has tested positive on Sunday.
Tests more than doubled
Tests have also been ramped up. On May 30, 3,099 samples of people with high social exposure were sent for testing. Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan had earlier said 3,000 samples would be collected daily. Till now, it were 9,000 tests a week.
No secondary infection
Returnees infecting close family members is a sign of home/room quarantine going wrong; one of the cases on Sunday is in Palakkad, a mother getting infected by a son who had returned from Chennai.
However, sources said there had still not been any case of primary contacts causing infections outside the family. Meaning, as yet, there is no secondary infection in Kerala.
The number of people in hospitals have increased to 1,241. Today alone, 208 were admitted to various hospitals in Kerala.
100th day celebrations, and after
On May 8, the 100th day after the first COVID-19 case was reported in Kerala and India and also when the first Vande Bharat flights landed in Kerala, there were only 16 active cases and a total of 503 confirmed cases.
Now, 23 days later and after 1.35 lakh people have returned in planes, trains and ships, there are 670 active cases and the total confirmed cases have more than doubled to 1,269.
If 503 cases were reported from January 30 to May 8, during the 23 days from May 9 to May 31 there has been 766 new cases. If in the first 100 days there were 503 cases at the rate of five new cases per day, in the last 23 days there were 766 cases at the rate of 33.3 cases per day.
Before that, between January 30 and May 8, there were only two days with more than 30 fresh cases; March 27 (39) and March 30 (32). Now, in the last 23 days, the average rate of daily cases is more than the second highest tally before May 8.