Kerala Health Minister Veena George on Friday said that the current Covid-19 trend in the state was obvious and the 50 percent of the state population is still not infected by the virus because of the state’s well-planned strategy to handle the pandemic.
Health Minister said that our defense against the infection was strong and right now, the main focus of the Kerala government is on the vaccine and it is something the state is running out of quickly.
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Veena Gorge was recently interviewed by NDTV, where she said, “The situation in Kerala is absolutely under control. How do you analyze this? Look at the data on occupancy in hospitals. It is less for hospitals, for ICU beds, and even in demand for oxygen support. It means the severity of the disease is less.”
“A Central team visited Kerala a couple of weeks ago. They visited many places, they visited hospitals, they went to many districts. They communicated to us that they are satisfied with the measures the government is adopting. They told us that “plateau-formation” in this phase is quite expected,” she continued.
While informing about the state’s fatality rate, Kerala Health Minister said, “Even if we add the excess deaths or all those deaths that went unreported, the state's fatality rate will be somewhere around 0.8 percent or 0.7 percent.”
Veena George highlighted that the state is facing an acute shortage of vaccines and said that two days ago the number of vaccines available was zero and then the Central Government provided around 9.73 lakh doses. She added, but now there would be again no vaccine in the state from tomorrow.
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In the last 24 hours, around 1.53 lakh samples are tested.
On Friday, the state reported more than 20,000 fresh Covid cases with the test positivity rate (TPR) rising to 13.61 percent and a total of 116 people succumbed to the virus. The total tally of Covid infected people in the state has risen to 33,70,137 and the death toll has reached at 16,701.
The total recoveries in the last 24 hours were 14,651, the total recoveries in the state are now at 31,92,104 and active cases are 1,60,824.
The most affected districts in the state are - Alappuzha, Ernakulam, Kannur, Kozhikode, Kollam, Kottayam, Malappuram, Palakkad, Thrissur, and Thiruvananthapuram.