No sign of respite; Centre sends experts to review Covid situation in Kerala
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New Delhi: Taking note of disturbing situation in Kerala as the state continues to report more than five thousand infections of Coronavirus, the Centre on Wednesday said that a high-level team has been deployed to Kerala to review the situation.
A total of 6,394 people have tested positive for Covid-19 across Kerala on Wednesday, while reports of 5,110 samples returned negative, according to a statement issued by the office of state health minister K.K. Shailaja.
As many as 65,057 people are under treatment in the state as on Wednesday. Meanwhile, 25 people have succumbed to the virus in the past 24 hours, taking the state's death toll to 3,209. The test positivity rate in Kerala is 10.01 per cent at present.
The Central team of experts will review the public health interventions in management of Covid-19 by the state government and support the health authorities in these measures.
The team will be headed by National Centre for Disease Control Director, Dr S.K. Singh. Kerala has been reporting very high daily new coronavirus cases since the past few days. A total of 35,038 new cases were logged during the last seven days.
Kerala has reported 5,615 cases in the last 24 hours, followed by 3,160 by Maharashtra and 1,021 by Chhattisgarh.
"As an ongoing effort to strengthen efforts of various State and UT governments for Covid management, the Central government has been deputing Central teams from time to time to visit various states and UTs," the Health Ministry said.
These teams interact with the state and UT authorities and get a first hand understanding of the challenges and issues being faced by them so as to strengthen their ongoing activities and remove bottlenecks, if any.
In Kerala, as many as 1,92,085 people are under observation in various districts as on Wednesday, including 11,138 patients at different hospitals.
Two new hotspots were added in the state on Wednesday - Kuttur in Pathanamthitta district and Shornur in Palakkad district - taking the total number of hotspots to 446.