Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan will convene a meeting to review the Covid situation in Kerala on Thursday amid yet another spike in cases across the state.
Vijayan, who is in the US for medical treatment, will attend the meeting online. The meeting will decide if more restrictions will have to be imposed to contain the spread of the virus.
The state has been recording an exponential rise in Covid cases in the past few days and even Kerala Government Secretariat is turning a COVID-19 hotspot.
In response the authorities have started imposing several restrictions at the nerve-centre of the state administration. The library in the secretariat complex has been shut for the time being.
Fresh cases of coronavirus infection have been reported from the offices of chief minister and a few other ministers, Manorama News reported on Tuesday.
A few personnel at the offices of the chief minister, forest minister, devaswom minister and health minister which function at the secretariat were found positive for the disease in the last few hours. Those who contracted the disease include the chief minister's political secretary. The offices of the forest and devaswom ministers were shut down temporarily. Three staff of the health minister's office have also tested positive.
General Education Minister V Sivankutty tested positive for the disease on Tuesday. Sivankutty is among the CPM leaders who have contracted the virus after actively participating in the party's district meet in Thiruvananthapuram.
The employee unions have requested to the government to restrict the number of Secretariat staff to be present at offices by 50 per cent. However, the government has refused to entertain the demand citing it would affect project implementations at a time when the ongoing fiscal year is coming to a close.
Kerala reported 22,946 fresh infections on Monday taking the total caseload to 53,92,652.
The state Health Department said the growth rate of new virus cases has shot up by 182 per cent compared to the number of cases reported in the previous week (January 10 and 16).
Among the districts, Thiruvananthapuram recorded 5,863 cases, the highest in the state, followed by Ernakulam with 4,100 cases and Kozhikode with 2,043 cases.
