Ten persons tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 in the State on Wednesday, of whom eight contracted the disease through contact with known or unknown sources.
Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, however, reiterated that there was no community transmission of COVID-19 in the State.
“There is widespread campaign in many quarters that the State is up against the community spread. There have been no developments with regard to COVID-19 that is uncontrollable. However, the threat of community transmission is very real,” he said while briefing media here on Wednesday. Kollam accounted for six out of the 10 new cases, while Thiruvananthapuram and Kasaragod reported two cases each.
Six in Kollam
In five out of six cases in Kollam, the persons acquired the disease through contact with known or unknown sources of infection. These include three health-care workers. One person came from Andhra Pradesh. Of the two cases in Kasaragod, both of which are cases of local transmission through contact, one is a media person from one of the news channels.
In Thiruvananthapuram, one person came from Tamil Nadu, while the other contracted the disease through contact with known or unknown source of infection.
Of the 495 cases reported so far, only 123 are currently undergoing treatment. The number of persons put under surveillance is 20,673, of whom 501 are in isolation in hospitals and the rest are in home quarantine. The State tested 24,952 samples so far for COVID-19, of which 23,880 returned a negative result.
Random tests
Mr. Vijayan said that results of 391 samples out of the 3,101 samples which had been randomly collected from select groups on a single day as part of an “augmented testing” drive were awaited. He said it was a relief that only three samples out of this random samples had tested positive.
