The COVID-19 situation in the State is becoming less threatening and the intensity of disease transmission has been coming down systematically now that over 91% of the eligible population has been covered with the first dose and 39.4% fully vaccinated Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has said .
All that the government could do now is to provide maximum safety cover for the people by completing the vaccination as fast as possible. While the virus will continue to circulate, adopting universal precautions to prevent infection and thus learning to live with COVID is the only way forward, he has said.
Talking to mediapersons here on Saturday, he said the growth of new cases had come down by 5% and those under treatment by 8% in the September 18-24 week in comparison to the previous week. The rate of hospitalisation and disease severity has been coming down. The number of active patients, those admitted in hospitals, field hospitals, ICU, ventilator and oxygen support has reduced by 16%, 7%, 21%, 3% and 6% respectively in this week compared to the previous week.
However, the R factor, which indicates the speed of disease transmission (R is the number of people that one infected person will pass on a virus to), which was 0.74 on September 17 has actually gone up slightly to 0.94 on September 24. Even so, an R factor below 1 is a huge relief for the State as it means that the disease will eventually stop spreading as not enough new infections are created to sustain the transmission.
Mr. Vijayan said that while Kottayam had the highest R factor of 1.06, followed by Ernakulam and Idukki, Wayanad had the lowest R at 0.72.
Reinfection rate less
Reinfection rate has been showing a decreasing trend in 2021 . Last year, the reinfection rate had been at least six times higher than it is this year. In both 2020 and 2021, reinfection rate was the highest in Malappuram, Pathanamthitta and Kasaragod. Those in the 20-30 year age group seems to be the most susceptible to reinfections, usually within 100-150 days.
Inpatient admission trends in medical college in the State also indicate a steady decrease in disease intensity and the number of admissions has decreased by 6.7% this week in comparison to the previous week.
About 52.7% of the COVID admissions in medical colleges were those who were unvaccinated. Among COVID deaths, 57.6% were unvaccinated , while 7.9% had received both doses of vaccine and were past the two-week window when they were infected.
