Kerala to go for region-specific curbs as statewide lockdown to be lifted from 16

Thiruvananthapuram: As the Kerala state-wide lockdown is set to end on Wednesday 16, the State government is planning to bring in region-specific restrictions from June 17.

Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said that there will be no complete lockdown across the state from June 17 but different measures of curbs will be imposed on regions where the number of COVID cases are high and various regulations will be placed in accordance with the intensity of the spread of the disease.

Instead of implementing the same restrictions and testing methods across the state, the CM said that the government has planned to impose different levels of regulations according to the intensity of the spread of the disease. He added that further guidelines on the region-specific restrictions will be announced shortly.

The high-level meeting that reviewed the complete lockdown in force in the state for the last 38 days unanimously decided that restrictions could be eased out as the state witnessed a fall in Covid cases and test positivity rate.

The current lockdown imposed in the state will end on June 16.

Meanwhile, the chief minister said that the Test Positivity Rate (TPR) of COVID-19 is declining in the state. The average TPR, which is the number of samples that test positive among a group of samples, for the last three days, is 12.7%.

The Chief Minister revealed that Thiruvananthapuram, Palakkad and Malappuram districts have a TPR of less than 15% and it is below 10% in Alappuzha and Kozhikode districts.

The state had declared a lockdown on May 5 when the number of daily COVID-19 cases reported was 41,593 with a TPR of 25.69%.

However, Pinarayi added that even though there is a decline in TPR as a whole, the picture is not rosy when it comes to local bodies.

According to the CM, there are 14 local bodies with a TPR higher than 35%, 37 with a TPR between 28-35% and 127 in the 21-28% TPR range.

The CM also said that the state government is trying to complete the vaccination drive, depending upon the supply from the Union government.

A total of 1.12 crore doses of the vaccine have been distributed in the state till June 13.

The central government has provided a total of 99,79,330 doses of COVID vaccine to Kerala including 90,34,680 doses of Covishield and 9,44,650 doses of Covaxin.

The state government directly procured 10.73 lakh doses and out of that, 8.92 lakh doses have been distributed.

The first dose was given to 68.14 lakh people above the age of 45 and the second dose to 14.27 lakh people, while in the age group of 18 to 44 years, 10.95 lakh people have received the first dose and 958 have got the second dose.

Currently, there is a stock of 4.32 lakh doses supplied by the Union Government and 2.08 lakh doses bought by the state government.