Kerala, on Tuesday, July 27, recorded 22,129 new COVID-19 cases, taking the total number of patients currently under treatment in the state to 1.45 lakh. The test positivity rate (percentage of people in a group testing positive for the virus) rose from 10.59% to 12.35% on Tuesday, the Kerala government said in the daily bulletin. As per the data of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Kerala tops the number of active cases in the country with 1.37 lakh cases as of Monday, July 26. Maharashtra, which has the second-highest number of active cases, at 92,088.
In the last 24 hours, a total of 1,79,130 samples were tested for coronavirus. The cumulative number of specimens examined so far is 2,65,36,792. The neighbouring state of Karnataka recorded 1,501 cases out of the 1.02 lakh samples tested, according to the daily bulletin on July 27, with a TPR of 1.46%. The Health Ministry, on Tuesday, expressed caution on the situation of Kerala and few other states that has a TPR above 10%.
The reproduction number of the virus (the number of people whom a coronavirus positive person infects) in Kerala is 1.2, which shows that the virus replication is going on, said Joint Secretary of Union Health Ministry, Lav Agarwal. "The mortality is not high but when there is so much virus replication, there are problems... variants can emerge, other areas around areas (with his infection rate) can get infected and the vulnerable population in any part of our country remains susceptible," Agarwal said.
Among the districts, Malappuram has reported the highest daily cases with 4,037 people being infected, while other districts reported below 3,000 cases. The number of COVID-19 cases reported in other districts is Thrissur - 2,623; Kozhikode - 2,397; Ernakulam - 2,352; Palakkad - 2,115; Kollam - 1, 914; Kottayam - 1,136; Thiruvananthapuram - 1,100; Kannur - 1,072; Alappuzha - 1,064; Kasaragod - 813; Wayanad - 583; Pathanamthitta - 523; Idukki - 400.
Kerala officially reported 156 deaths due to COVID-19, taking the (official) total number of deaths to 16,326. As many as 13,145 people have recovered from the infection. With this, 31,43,043 patients have recovered so far.
Of the new cases reported on Tuesday, 116 are health workers, 124 had come from outside the state and 20,914 were infected through contact, with the source of contact being not clear in 975 cases, the bulletin said.
Currently 4,36,387 people in quarantine in various districts. Of these, 4,09,931 are in-home or institutional quarantine and 26,266 in hospitals.
While there are 271 regions in the state with more than 15% TPR, there are 626 areas in the state with a TPR of more than 10%, the bulletin said.