Study finds flouting social distancing key reason for Covid spike in Kerala

Kerala government has decided to strictly enforce physical distancing norms and increase the number of daily tests after a study pointed out that the reason behind 65% of the those infected by Covid-19 is non-compliance of physical distancing rules.

A review meeting convened by Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Wednesday evaluated that relaxation of norms was the key reason for Covid-19 cases to remain high in Kerala and the issue may turn severe unless urgent measures were taken with an aim to contain the spike by the middle of February.

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The Community Medicine Department of Thiruvananthapuram Medical College conducted the study which found that 56% of the people were being infected from within their houses. While 65% of the infected were found not to be complying with social distancing norms, 45% of them weren't wearing masks.

About 30% got the infection from asymptomatic patients and 47% of the children who got infected also got the infection from their houses and only 5% were infected from schools.

It may be recalled that state Health Minister K K Shailaja and health department officials were maintaining that Covid-19 fresh cases continue to remain high in Kerala.

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This is due to reasons like the high population density of the state as well as the state's strategy to delay the peak of the infection so as to prepare the health department properly take care of all patients and thereby keeping the death rate low.

However, health experts have been citing serious flaws in the strategy and pushing for more number of daily tests, especially RT-PCR.

On Wednesday, 5,659 fresh cases were reported taking the total cases in the state so far to 9,05,591 and the number of active cases to 72,234.