COVID-19: Kerala records highest single-day count of 1,569 on Friday, tally crosses 40K

Thiruvananthapuram: Kerala shattered its single-day record for new COVID-19 infections on Friday with 1,569 cases, the Health department informed in a press statement.

The previous single-day record, 1,564, was recorded on August 13. The state is reporting over 1,000 cases for the eleventh consecutive day.

The state has reported 41,277 COVID-19 cases so far, out of which 26,996 persons recovered. The remaining 14, 094 patients are being treated in various hospitals.

From when the first case was confirmed in the state on January 30, 2020, it took 168 days, or five-and-a-half months to reach the 10k-mark on July 16. In the next 11 days it crossed 20,000 cases on July 28 and just nine more days to breach the 30,000 mark on August 6. Keeping with the trend, in just another eight days the number of cases breached the 40,000 mark on Friday.

Of the new cases, 1,354 people, or 86%, acquired infections through contact. The source of infection of 86 among them is unknown. As many as 56 infected persons came from abroad while 132 came from other states.

In a slight relief, 1,094 patients were cured of COVID-19 on Friday, the press statement said.

District-wise breakup of today's positive cases:

Thiruvananthapuram – 310 (contact cases – 300)

Malappuram - 198 (173)

Palakkad - 180 (161)

Ernakulam - 114 (110)

Alappuzha - 113 (99)

Kottayam - 101 (86)

Kozhikode - 99 (85)

Kannur - 95 (63)

Thrissur - 80 (68)

Kollam - 75 (65)

Idukki - 58 (31)

Wayanad - 57 (56)

Kasaragod – 49 (34)

Pathanamthitta – 40 (23)

District-wise breakup of recoveries:

Malappuram - 424

Thiruvananthapuram - 199

Kozhikode - 111

Palakkad - 91

Ernakulam - 87

Kannur - 75

Alappuzha - 66

Thrissur - 53

Kasaragod - 51

Kottayam - 48

Wayanad - 33

Pathanamthitta - 32

Kollam - 26

Idukki – 8

COVID deaths

The health department also confirmed 10 COVID-19 deaths today. The deceased were identified as Lakshmi (74), Nirmala (65), Sherly (62) Lalitha (70), M Surendran (60), Stansilas (80) (all from Thiruvananthapuram district), Moiduppa (82) of Perinthalmanna in Malappuram, George (65) of Arimbur in Thrissur, Thankappan (70) of North Paravoor and Rukhia (60) of Fort Kochi in Ernakulam.

With this the state's death count rose to 139.

CM, 7 ministers in isolation

Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and 7 other ministers have gone into self quarantine after Malappuram district collector K Gopalakrishnan was declared coronavirus positive.

The Malappuram collector, the assistant collector and 20 other employees of the Collectorate, who had actively taken part in the rescue operations at Karipur, had tested positive on Friday.

The seven ministers are - E Chandrasekharan, K K Shailaja, K T Jaleel, E P Jayarajan, A C Moideen, V S Sunil Kumar, Kadannapally Ramachandran.

Speaker P Sreeramakrishnan and DGP Loknath Behra, who were with the chief minister during his Karipur visit a day after the tragedy, have also been asked to quarantine themselves. Other people's representatives who were also present were also asked to isolate themselves.

Testing and quarantine

In the last 24 hours, 31,738 samples have been tested, the health department statement said on Friday.

In total, 11,20,935 samples (including routine, airport surveillance, pooled sentinel, CBNAAT, TrueNAT, CLIA and antigen assay) were sent for testing. Of this, results of 8,220 samples are yet to be returned. Out of the 1,45,064 samples collected as part of sentinel surveillance, results of 1,645 samples are yet to be received, it said.

Of the 1,55,025 people under observation for suspected infection, 1,42,291 are in home or institutional quarantine and 12,734 hospitalised. As many as 1,479 people were hospitalised since Thursday.

Eighteen new places were designated as hotspots on Friday, while seven LSGs were excluded from the list. The state presently has 555 hotspots.