The COVID-19 case graph maintained the plateauing trend of the past few days, with the State reporting 6,820 new cases on Thursday when 61,388 samples were tested in the past 24 hours.
The test positivity rate has dipped to 11.1%.
The State also reported more recoveries than new cases on Thursday, with 7,699 patients getting discharged from hospitals. This brought the active case pool in the State further down to 84,087 cases.
The active COVID-19 case pool had hit the peak at 97,417 cases on October 24 and it looked like it was moving towards the one-lakh mark. However, the weekly moving average in the case graph began slumping after October 24.
Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, in his daily briefing on Thursday, said the active pool had been going down and that compared to the previous week, there was a 10% reduction in the growth rate.
He said that after so many days, this was the first time such a trend had been noticed.
He cautioned that this did not indicate that COVID-19 was on its way out and that it might hit another peak if one let go of the vigil in disease prevention and control and lead to a more serious situation.
The cumulative case burden now stands at 4,66,466 cases, with a total of 3,80,650 recoveries reported till date.
The Health Department added 26 more deaths to its official COVID death list, taking the State’s cumulative toll to 1,613. These deaths occurred between October 23 and November 3, of which Thiruvananthapuram accounted for nine, Malappuram five, Alappuzha three, Kollam, Thrissur and Kannur two each and one each in Wayanad, Palakkad and Ernakulam.
At present, official figures put the number of patients who are critically ill and in ICUs at 822, with 219 patients requiring ventilator support.
Of the new cases, 6,725 cases (98.6%) are locally acquired infections, with the source of infection remaining untraceable in 730 cases. The number of health-care workers who contracted the infection is 60.
Among districts, Thrissur has 900 cases, Kozhikode 828, Thiruvananthapuram 756, Ernakulam 749, Alappuzha 660, Malappuram 627, Kollam 523, Kottayam 479, Palakkad 372, Kannur 329, Pathanamthitta 212, Kasaragod 155, Idukki 116 and Wayanad 114 cases.
