The Centre has issued an alert to Kerala to examine the COVID-19 situation in the State at the district and sub-district level and to focus on the implementation of COVID preventive and management guidelines as the State has reported a definite uptick in COVID cases over the past one week.
In his letter to Principal Health Secretary Tinku Biswal, the Union Health Secretary points out that Kerala has reported an increase in weekly COVID cases from 434 in the week ending March 8 to 579 in the week ending March 15. The positivity rate in Kerala, 2.64% as on March 15, is higher than the national positivity rate of 0.61%.
The Centre advises that the State continue to follow the Test-Track-Treat-Vaccination strategy, by focussing on adequate and proactive testing, monitoring new and emerging clusters of cases, monitoring all influenza-like illnesses and severe acute respiratory infections, genomic sequencing of samples from sentinel sites, and ensuring that COVID-appropriate behaviour is followed by all in enclosed/crowded spaces.
682 cases on Thursday
Senior Health officials in the State said that fever cases in the current season had been up three fold, when compared to the previous season and that COVID cases as well as hospital admission were also beginning to show a slight surge.
“On March 8, the daily reported COVID cases was 484. The new cases on Thursday (March 16) is 682. Last week if the hospitalisations were in the 70 plus range, it has crossed the 100 mark now. We had issued an alert to districts on Monday itself that the COVID cases and admissions needed close monitoring and that data had to be updated on a regular basis,” a senior Health official said.
He pointed out that the guidelines issued by the State, mandating the following of universal precautions against all respiratory infections, especially cough etiquette and mandatory masking in crowded or enclosed spaces, were very much in place. However, these were now followed by the public more in the breach.
3,000-5,000 tests daily
The State is doing some 3,000-5,000 COVID tests daily, a majority of which is in the private sector. Though fever and influenza cases in OP clinics have been on the rise, testing is now done depending on the severity of symptoms.
The failure of COVID-19 data updation in the public domain seems to have blunted the public’s response to COVID alerts, officials said.
