Coronavirus in Kerala: Kasaragod flattens curve, Kannur still fighting

KANNUR: When a 19-year-old medical student, who returned from Wuhan in China, tested positive for Covid-19 in Kasaragod on February 3, it was seen as an isolated case. Then, on March 16, when a person who came from Dubai tested positive, that was an alarm. Then it was a flood of positive cases till the first week of April in the district, which witnessed 34 positive cases in a single day on March 27, and 19 on March 23.
But today, after 168 cases testing positive, the curve has not just flattened but it has come down, that too without any casualty. A total of 107 have already recovered, which means the recovery rate is 63.7 percent. "In the last week, only seven cases were reported, and the number of people under surveillance has also come down considerably," said district medical officer (DMO) Dr AV Ramdas.
According to Inspector-General Vijay Sakhare, who coordinates the law and order and the enforcement of lockdown in the district, containment strategy by the police, and able medical support has helped Kasaragod achieve this. The district now targets zero cases by the end of this month.
Meanwhile, the scenario is not that bright in Kannur. In the last one week since April 10, there were 21 positive and 10 of them were primary contacts. Only 39 have been discharged so far, which means the recovery rate is 46.4 percent. Moreover, some cases were reported even after the mandatory quarantine period of 14 days. Though the people are concerned about the positive cases reported from the district even three weeks after the flight services were stopped and the state borders closed, there is no need for any worry, said Kannur district collector TV Subhash.
"If you look at the data, it can be seen that of the 84 cases reported in the district so far, 64 are people who came from abroad while the remaining 20 are their primary contacts, out of which eight are from the same family, which means there was no community transmission of the disease," he said. The collector says there are two major reasons. "First, all the primary contacts of the people who tested positive were tested for Covid-19 even if there was no symptom. Secondly, we conducted the Covid-19 test for all those who came from abroad even when they showed no major symptoms of the disease, and thanks to this some more positive cases surfaced," he said.
Further, though normally a person is put under quarantine for 14 days, here some positive cases surfaced even after 25 days, pointed out the officials. This also prompted them to increase the specimen collection, which helped prevent the community spread, according to them. "If a few more cases are reported in the next few days, there is nothing to panic, because we would be completing the specimen collection of all those people only by April 20," said Kannur DMO K Narayanan Nayak. The expectation is that all the positive cases would come to the fore by April 20, he said.