Kerala Finance Minister Dr T M Thomas Isaac tested positive for COVID-19 on Sunday, the first in the cabinet to contract the infection, and has been shifted to the Thiruvananthapuram Medical College Hospital on Sunday, official sources said.
His swab samples were taken as he had a minor cold and he tested positive on Sunday.
The source of his infection is also unknown. Sources also sad that he was mostly confined to his official residence in Thiruvananthapuram for over a week.
However, some media outlets reported that Isaac attended his office in the Secretariat till 5:30pm on Sunday before he underwent the test.
Though none of his office staff has been found positive, they have been asked to go into isolation.
This is the first time a minister has contracted COVID-19 in Kerala.
Following this, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan as well as some CPI(M) leaders who took part in the party's State Secretariat at the AKG Centre in Thiruvananthapuram recently, which Isaac also attended, went into self-quarantine.
Besides his official duties as finance minister, Isaac had also been politically active on social media. He is also considered the Chief Minister's sharpest defenders, especially in the gold smuggling scandal. Isaac has also taken upon himself to expose what he terms "fake news" in the mainstream media on his Facebook page.
Last month, Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and three other ministers had gone into self-quarantine after they came in the primary contact list of Malappuram district collector K Gopalakrishnan who tested positive for the coronavirus infection.
Along with the CM, ministers K K Shailaja, A C Moideen, E Chandrashekharan had gone into self-quarantine then. However, none had tested positive.
Isaac tested positive on a day when the state recorded its highest single-day spike of COVID cases – 3,082. This is the first time the state's daily COVID tally crossed the 3,000-mark. The state also reported 2,196 recoveries on Sunday.
Of Sunday's cases, 2,844 contracted the disease through contact. Among them, the source of infection of 189 is yet to be traced.
Fifty-six of the newly-infected came from abroad while 132 came from other states. There are 50 health workers among Sunday's positive cases.