Kerala reported 4,937 new COVID-19 cases on Tuesday.
Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan told the media that 18 deaths in the past few days were confirmed to have been caused by the infection and the number of fatalities due to the pandemic so far had gone up to 4,016.
As many as 74,352 samples were tested over 24 hours and the daily test positivity rate (TPR) fell to 6.64%. On Monday, it was 7.31%.
The active case pool dropped further to 60,761 on Tuesday when 5,439 people recovered from the infection. So far, there had been 9,46,910 recoveries.
Of the new cases, 4,478 were locally acquired infections, 90 people had returned from other States, and the source of 340 others is not known.
Ernakulam reported 643 cases, Kollam 547, Pathanamthitta 524, Thrissur 503, Kottayam 471, Kozhikode 424, Alappuzha 381, Thiruvananthapuram 373, Malappuram 345, Palakkad 217, Kannur 182, Wayanad 135, Kasaragod 126, and Idukki 66.
U.K. variant
None of the newly infected persons were returnees from the United Kingdom. So far 84 people who returned from the country have tested positive for the virus and 70 of them have recovered.
Only 10 people have reported the presence of the mutated variant of SARS-CoV-2.
