THIRUVANANTHPURAM
: The state on Saturday reported 9,016 new
Covid cases
, taking the caseload to 3,34,228. In the last 24 hours, only 52,067 samples were tested. The test positivity rate remained very high at 17.3%.
Among the new cases, 8,889 were infected via contact including 104
health workers
and 127 had travelled to
Kerala from outside. The number of
recoveries
climbed to 2,36,989 after 7,991
patients
tested negative during the day, while the death toll climbed to 1,139 after 26
Covid deaths
were confirmed. Currently, there are 96,004 active cases.
Meanwhile, opposition leader Ramesh Chennithala alleged that the government was purposely slowing down Covid-19 testing to reduce caseload. “Kerala now has the highest test positivity rate. Since, there are no efforts to increase testing, the accurate details of disease are not available,” Chennithala said. He also alleged that the government was suppressing the real data of those who died due to Covid.
Rajagopal (47), Bhavani (70), Dattu (42), Ajith Kumar (59), Vijitha (26), Usha (63) and Satish Kumar (39) from Thiruvananthapuram, Madhusoodanan Nair (75), Sreedharan Pillai (90) and Shahudeen (64) from Kollam, Thankamma Velayudhan (79) and Suresh (52) from Alappuzha, Paramu (84), Mathai (68) and Hasan Pillai (94) from Kottayam, Bhavani (81) from Ernakulam, Rajan (64), Victory (80) and Pareeth (103) from Thrissur, Aboobacker (54), Syed Mohammad (74), Khadeeja (68), Asarumma (58) and Aravindakshan (61) from Malappuram, Ahmed (68) from Kozhikode and Jameela (60) from Kannur were the deceased.
A total of 2,76,900 people are in isolation in various districts of the state — 2,51,935 under home or institutional quarantine and 24,965 in hospitals. On Saturday, 2,971 people were hospitalised. With the addition of eight new places and deletion of 18, there are 633 hotspots in the state now.