The Health Department is keeping a close watch on the steady increase in the number of people testing positive for SARS-CoV-2 and requiring hospitalisation.
The government has already taken a decision to de-congest medical college hospitals (MCHs), which are the dedicated COVID-19 hospitals in districts, by shifting all mild cases to COVID-19 first-line treatment centres (CFTCs) and keeping only those patients with serious disease at the MCHs.
However, the CFTCs have just become operational to accommodate in-patients in many districts. But as the intake of patients steadily increase, the government will have to improve the facilities for round-the-clock care, including deployment of more health-care staff, on a war footing in all these centres.
New cases
Of the 118 new cases on Sunday, 68 cases were found in persons who had returned from abroad and another 36 in persons who had travelled in from other parts of the country.
The new cases reported in districts are as follows: Kannur (26), Thrissur (17), Kollam (10), Alapuzha (10), Thiruvananthapuram (9), Ernakulam (7), Kozhikode (7), Kasaragod (6), Kottayam (5), Malappuram (5), Wayanad (5), Idukki (4), Palakkad (4) and Pathanamthitta (3).
The case tally of the State since the outbreak began is now 4,189. The total number of recoveries is 2,150.
The State has put over 1.75 lakh people on surveillance and quarantine, of whom, 2,611 persons with mild symptoms have been isolated in hospitals in various districts.
The number of samples tested in the past 24 hours is 5,406. The total number of samples tested so far in various categories is 2, 20,821. This is apart from the 45,592 samples tested from amongst priority groups in the population as part of sentinel surveillance study.
Thirteen new regions in Kottayam, Malappuram, Alappuzha and Ernakulam districts entered the State’s hotspot list. The total number of hotspots in the State now is 124.
