While the fresh Covid cases of Kerala remained above the 30,000 mark for the second consecutive day, the Covid death rate of Kerala is also witnessing a slight increase as the total deaths crossed the 20,000 mark on Thursday.
The Covid death rate of Kerala that remained around 0.4 per cent during the beginning of this year has now crossed the 0.5 per cent mark. The total daily Covid deaths have been witnessing a marginal increase over the last few months. The total Covid deaths of Kerala reached 20,134 by Thursday with 164 more deaths reported in the last 24 hours. This apart 517 non-Covid deaths where persons who got the infection died due to other reasons were also reported in the state.
The Covid death rate of Kerala is still much below the national average of around 1.34 per cent. The state health department was highlighting the low death rate as a key achievement of the state’s strategy of ensuring proper medical care to the infected by controlling the spread of Covid.
Meanwhile, the fresh cases were remaining alarmingly high. The TPR on Thursday was 18.03 per cent. The increasing trend, which is considered to be the outcome of the lockdown relaxations during Onam, is likely to continue for some more days or weeks, a health department official said.
Even as the number of active cases in the state reached 1,81,209, those in hospitals was only 27,425. Over 57 per cent of the hospitals' beds in the state were already occupied.
The Left Democratic Front government in the state is coming under severe criticism from the opposition political parties.
Opposition leader V D Satheesan of Congress said that the state’s Covid containment strategy was proving to be a failure and hence the state should rework it. Kerala BJP leader and Minister of state for External Affairs V Muraleedharan said that Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan should explain the reason why Kerala became the worst state in containing Covid.
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