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With Kerala accounting for over 25% of the active COVID-19 cases currently being reported in the country, the State Health department has directed district health administrations to enhance testing and to keep a close eye on severe acute respiratory infections, amongst all influenza-like illnesses.
According to the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare’s COVID-19 dashboard, of the 8,601 active cases of COVID-19 in the country at present, Kerala accounts for 2,186 active cases as on Saturday, which is 96 cases more than that of the previous day. On March 22, Kerala had 1,026 active COVID-19 cases, with 111 persons admitted in hospitals across districts.
In three days, the active COVID-19 cases have more than doubled in Kerala. Health officials maintain that this does not signal any public health emergency, given the fact that this is the season when all respiratory diseases show a spike.
‘Endemic now’
“SARS CoV2 is endemic now and since the virus is going to be with us like H1N1, it should be normal to see seasonal spikes in COVID-19. However, we need to monitor trends in hospitalisations so that we are not caught off guard. Not just COVID-19, we have respiratory syncytial virus, Influenza A (H1N1 and H3N2) co-circulating at present. We have directed hospitals to do the entire viral panel of tests in cases of respiratory infections reaching OP clinics now,” a senior Health official said.
She added that the current scenario is quite different from what it was in 2020 and that even a spike in COVID-19 cases was not expected to trigger a massive spike in hospital admissions.
Data not in public domain
What is however bugging public health experts is the fact that Kerala has removed its COVID-19 data entirely from the public domain. On April 11 last year, the State government decided that it no longer needed to publish detailed COVID-19 daily bulletins. It maintained that the data was being monitored daily but that it was no longer necessary to share it on the public domain.
Though after a while, COVID-19 figured amongst the list of diseases in the daily bulletin of the Integrated Disease Surveillance Project (IDSP), it has now disappeared from IDSP reports also. Health officials remained tight-lipped about why COVID-19 data is not being shared in the public domain. K.J. Reena, Director of Health Services (the State’s public health authority under the new Kerala Public Health Act 2023), said that she has been expressly asked not to give out COVID-19 data and that any data given out will be the discretion of the Health Minister.
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