Kerala’s cumulative case burden of COVID-19 cases rose to 10,52,357, with the State reporting 3,671 new cases on Friday, when 67,812 samples were tested in the past 24 hours.
The test positivity rate has remained more or less steady in the range of 5-6% all of this week and was 5.41% on Friday. Of the 67,812 tests, 37,851 were rapid antigen assay while the RT-PCR test numbers went up to 27,645. Other molecular diagnostic tests such as Truenat, CBNAAT, constituted the remaining tests.
The State has been reporting a significantly higher number of recoveries than new cases for the past several days and on Friday, with 4,142 persons reported to have recovered from the disease, the active case pool dropped further to 51,390 cases. The cumulative recoveries reported by the State ever since the pandemic began thus rose to 9,96,514 cases.
The addition of 14 new deaths to the official list of fatalities on Friday took the State’s cumulative COVID toll till date to 4,164. Kollam and Pathanamthitta reported four deaths each, Kozhikode two, while Thiruvananthapuram, Alappuzha, Thrissur, and Palakkad reported one death each.
The number of critically ill patients being treated in ICUs is 674 as on Friday.
Among districts, Thrissur reported the maximum number of 490 cases, Kozhikode 457, Kollam 378, Pathanamthitta 333, Ernakulam 332, Malappuram 278, Alappuzha 272, Thiruvananthapuram 234, Kottayam 227, Kannur 177, Wayanad 159, Palakkad 130, Kasaragod 119, and Idukki 85.
U.K. variant
Three more persons who travelled to the State from the United Kingdom tested positive in the past 24 hours.
A total of 94 persons who reached the State from the U.K. since mid-December have tested positive for COVID-19. Official reports said that 82 of them have since tested negative. So far, 11 persons, including one contact of a U.K. returnee, have tested positive for the virus variant B.1.1.7 in the State.
