The State government has concluded that the third stage transmission of COVID-19, when the disease spreads to the community, has eluded Kerala.
Chief Minister, Pinarayi Vijayan, briefing media here on Thursday, said that so far there has been no community transmission in the State, even though the threat of this happening is very much real.
On Thursday, the reporting of new COVID-19 cases in two districts, Kottayam and Idukki, which had been designated as Green zones earlier by the government because there were no cases in these districts had sent the alarm bells ringing.
Of the 10 new COVID-19 cases reported in Kerala on Thursday, Idukki accounted for four cases and Kottayam, two, making the government put these districts back on the restricted zone list.
Kozhikode also reported two cases, while Thiruvananthapuram and Kollam reported one case each.
Of the 10 new cases, four had come from neighbouring States, two had come from abroad and four are contacts of the imported cases.
Of the 447 cases reported so far, only 129 are currently undergoing treatment in hospitals.
Only 23,876 people are remaining in the government’s quarantine pool now, of whom 437 have been isolated in hospitals while the rest are in home quarantine
The government is very wary and unhappy about the fact that the movement of people along the areas on inter-State borders surreptitiously has been contributing to new cases at a time when the State has been containing the disease well.
Extensive PCR testing
The sudden spike in new cases over the past week has had the government resolve to do PCR testing more extensively, especially in the four districts in the red zone.
With the ICMR giving its approval, the PCR testing can now be done at the labs at Pariyaram and Kottayam medical college hospitals too, taking the total number of labs in the State to 16, including two private labs. Mr. Vijayan said the government had sanctioned the purchase of 10 more PCR testing platforms.
The government will, as decided earlier, conduct antibody testing in a random manner in select groups, including health-care workers, police personnel, home delivery staff, volunteer groups and migrant workers, as part of community surveillance to determine if there was a silent disease transmission in the community.
Mr. Vijayan, said that though quality issues were being cited in the antibody test kits distributed to States by the ICMR, it does not mean that antibody tests need not be done at all.
The government, with the help of the ICMR, will make quality test kits available for antibody testing.
The Chief Minister said that the government would take the lead in ensuring special care and vigil in protecting the elderly, who are extremely vulnerable to the disease.
He said that all speculation regarding the tracing of those who had attended the Tablighi meetings in Delhi should be laid to rest as the State has managed to track and test all those from Kerala who had attended the meeting.
