With Kerala reporting another surge and adding 31,265 fresh Covid-19 cases and a high test positivity rate (TPR) of 18.67%, the state government on Saturday decided to impose night curfew from next week and announced a number of steps to ramp up containment measures.
Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan admitted that Covid-19 cases had risen phenomenally due to various reasons but said the situation was well under control. He said there was a concerted attempt from certain quarters to sully the image of the state but it would not succeed. He also called a meeting of medical experts on September 1 and another with local body heads on September 3. Night curfew will begin from 10 pm to 7 am and only emergency movement will be allowed.
“Some people are deliberately trying to trigger panic. The state never witnessed floating bodies in rivers or unending queues before cremation grounds. Its mortality rate is still lowest in the country, .5 against national average of 1.34 per cent,” the CM said while trying to paint a rosy picture.
For more than a week, Kerala has been contributing more than 60 per cent of the total cases of the country. In the last 24 hours, the country reported 46,759 new cases with a TPR of 3%. But the CM said saving maximum lives was paramount.
He also denied a barrage of allegations raised by the opposition that bureaucrats hijacked containment strategies, experts were never consulted and the state was heavily depending on antigen tests. “The virus never differentiates between the ruling and opposition parties. Instead of raising such frivolous charges it is time to fight together,” he said adding the state was making all arrangements foreseeing a possible third wave.
“Some relaxations due to the festive season, high density of population, large number of elderly population, high presence of lifestyle diseases and the highly contagious Delta variant triggered the surge. We have increased tests and vaccination. By September end we will vaccinate all eligible people,” he said listing out the high vaccination rate, low wastage of doses and other factors.
As the state with less than 3 per cent of the population of the country continues to report more than 60 per cent of the total cases consistently, many experts fear it can be the epicentre of an impending third wave. Once lauded for decentralised containment strategy its model has gone for a toss in the last two months, statistics show. The mortality rate it is also going up, in July it was .3 per cent but now it has risen to .5 per cent. There has been an upward spiral in daily cases, deaths and active caseload in the last five days.
Kerala reported 31,265 cases with a TPR of 18.67 on Saturday after testing 1,67,497 samples. It also reported 153 deaths and the active caseload also crossed two lakh (2,04,086) after three months.
On Friday Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan had sent a fresh letter to the government expressing serious concern over the high caseload and listed immediate measures to contain the surge. In the letter addressed to Kerala chief secretary VP Joy, Bhushan said the state will have to ramp up its containment measures on priority basis and increase tests considerably to check high transmission.
