The State’s COVID-19 case graph is beginning to plateau with 28,798 new cases being reported on Wednesday when 1,44,372 samples were tested in the past 24 hours.
The State had gone into lockdown when the daily cases had crossed 42,000. Lockdown has helped to stabilise daily new cases now. The test positivity rate has come down below 20% for the first time in several weeks and registered 19.95%.
The active case pool is steadily going down and has been registering more recoveries than new cases. With 35,525 recoveries, the case pool now has 2,48,526 patients. However, hospitalisations have not come down, nor have the number of patients ending up in ICUs and ventilators.
On Wednesday, 3, 823 persons were newly admitted in hospitals, a total of 39,020 patients are being treated for moderate or severe COVID in hospitals. Total ICU admissions of critically ill patients in both public and private hospitals is 3,982, with the number of those on ventilator support rising to 1,536.
Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said that while the pace of disease dissemination had come down, there was no let up in hospitalisations or ICU admissions and that the situation was far from being comfortable. The vigil will have to be maintained.
He said that unless crowding in hospitals reduced, saving the lives of people would become difficult.
The State added 151 new deaths to the official, taking the cumulative COVID fatalities to 7,882. These are not deaths reported in the past 24 hours but which occurred over the past several days.
In Thiruvananthapuram, the active case pool declined further to 17,579. But hospitalisations are rising steadily. The district has the highest number of hospitalisations with 6,394 patients. On Wednesday alone, 796 patients were admitted to various hospitals in the district.
The cumulative case burden of the State ever since the pandemic began, now stands at 24,24,388 cases.
Among districts, Malappuram reported the highest number of new cases with 4,751, Ernakulam 3,444, Palakkad 3,038, Kollam 2,886, Thiruvananthapuram 2,829, Thrissur 2, 209, Alappuzha 2,184, Kozhikode 1,817, Kottayam 1,473, Kannur 1,304, Idukki 1,012, Pathanamthitta 906, Kasaragod 572 and Wayanad 373 cases.
