With COVID-19 case graph spiralling up, the State has reinforced lockdown on Sundays, with “limited permissible activities” alone allowed on the day. The order to the effect was issued by the Chief Secretary on Friday.
Health Minister Veena George has cautioned the public to maintain extreme vigil when in public spaces or workplaces and to take all individual precautions to prevent themselves from being infected.
Extreme care should be taken in the case of children, who are the most vulnerable to infection now. Parents should ensure that they did not let children accompany them for shopping or other trips outside, Ms. George said while speaking to media persons here on Friday.
Defending the manner in which the State had been carrying on with containment, she said the fact that Indian Council of Medical Research’s (ICMR) sero prevalence survey in June had reported that over 50% of the population in the State was immunologically naive was testament to the efficient manner in which Kerala had managed to control disease transmission.
She said the State’s testing, tracing and containing disease transmission had been hailed as most scientific by public health experts. Kerala’s case under-counting factor was the lowest, with one case detected for every six infections in the community while the national average was 1 in 33.
The State’s attempt now was to keep the people safe from serious disease and death by vaccinating them as soon as possible.
At this stage of the pandemic, even when a rise in cases was inevitable because of the high transmission of the Delta variant, hospitalisations and ICU occupancy was not rising simultaneously, Ms. George said.
She said that 43% of ICUs and 75% ventilators in public health facilities continued to be vacant now. Ms. George reiterated that the government had nothing to hide and that all aspects of COVID was being handled in a very transparently and honestly.
COVID death reporting was now taking place real-time from districts, through an online portal and the districts were in the process of updating the “missing COVID deaths” before the online reporting system was introduced.
She said there was no change in the government’s policy of providing COVID treatment free of cost to all through public and 281 empanelled private health facilities.
