KOCHI: Kerala on Friday made official 464 previously undocumented Covid-19 deaths besides 99 deaths in the last few days, taking the total Covid deaths in the state to 27,765.
The state health department release said that the death toll has increased to 27,765 following the addition of 292 de- aths until June14 that were not treated as Covid related deaths due to lack of sufficient documents, and another 172 were added based on the central government’s revised guidelines as per the Supreme Court judgment.
In the past, public health experts and even opposition parties had alleged that the government was not transparent with its data on Covid deaths and was hiding the same.
Though health minister Veena George had promised transparency, it is only now that the government started adding unreported Covid deaths to its total tally. George had said in the Assembly recently that 7,000 “missing” deaths would be added soon. All deaths are being verified at the state-level before it is added to the official list to avoid duplications.
Meanwhile, the state saw a spike in new Covid cases and hospitalisation on Friday. With 9,361 new cases, people who were newly admitted to the hospital was 825. Ernakulam reported the maximum number of cases with 1,552, followed by Thiruvananthapuram (1,214), Kollam (1,013), Thrissur (910), Kottayam (731), Kozhikode (712), Idukki (537), Malappuram (517), Pathanamthitta (500), Kannur (467), Alappuzha (390), Palakkad (337), Wayanad (310) and Kasaragod (171).
During the last 24 hours, 80,393 samples were tested. As per the weekly infection population ratio (WIPR), 211 wards in 158 local bodies are having a WIPR of above 10%.
At present, out of 80,892 Covid cases, about 9.8% are admitted to hospitals or field hospitals.
