Kerala contributes 50% of India's COVID cases in past 7 days

Thiruvananthapuram: Kerala on Tuesday once again recorded more than 20,000 coronavirus infections in the past 24 hours, raising the country's concern meter up by several notches as a third wave of the pandemic looms.

As many as 23,676 people in Kerala tested positive for COVID-19 in the last one day, pushing the state's infection tally to 34.49 lakh, while 148 more deaths took the overall fatality count to 17,103.

The southern state has been reporting half of India's new Covid-19 cases for the past few days. Last week, Kerala reported 1.4 lakh new Covid-19 cases (highest in India), around 20,000 more than the previous week. The test positivity rate in the state, after holding steady nearly all of July, is now inching upwards.

Part of this surge might be attributed to the fact that the state had the lowest seroprevalence. The high-level multi-disciplinary central team, which is currently visiting the state, is learnt to have concluded that inadequate monitoring of Covid positive cases in home isolation because of pandemic fatigue is the reason behind the surge. Kerala has the highest number of districts with a Covid-19 positivity rate of over 10%.

At present, the total active COVID-19 cases in the state are 1,73,221.

As many as 1,99,456 samples were tested in the last 24 hours and a positivity rate of 11.87 per cent was recorded.

According to the Union Health Ministry, Kerala is among eight states with high reproduction (R) numbers and 10 districts of the state are witnessing an increasing trend in cases.

In the week ended August 1, states/UTs like Kerala, Delhi, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Mizoram, J&K, Sikkim, and Karnataka have also witnessed a spike in Covid-19 cases, which is worrying. India's 'R' value (reproduction number), a key indicator of how fast the Covid-19 virus is infecting people, has also gone above 1. Except for Mumbai and Pune, all most all major cities in the country are reporting an 'R' value above 1.

On the positive side, the national tally was slightly lower than the number reported last Tuesday (42,948). Fresh cases on Monday too were marginally below the count reported on the same day week, indicating that the surge in India's cases seen last week has not carried over to this week yet. This is reflected in the seven-day average of daily cases which has dropped from 40,832 on Sunday to 40,665 on Tuesday.