After Onam wk, Kerala cases surge past 24k

After the festive week of Onam, Kerala woke up to the grim reality of the pandemic as daily Covid-19 cases in the state shot up to a near three-month high of 24,296 on Tuesday. The massive surge pushed the national count of fresh cases past the 37,000 mark again after 11 days.

India recorded 37,642 new cases on Tuesday, the highest single-day count since August 13. Nearly 65% of the fresh infections came from Kerala. The state’s tally nearly equalled India’s Covid count on the previous day, when 24,733 cases were detected. The spike in Kerala comes after days of relatively low testing and detections due to Onam. The state reported fewer than 17,000 new daily cases over the past three days, although the numbers prior to that were above 20,000.

The accumulated backlog was reflected in Tuesday’s test positivity rate which jumped to 18.04%, the highest in recent weeks. Tuesday’s count of 24,296 was the highest single-day tally of cases in the state since it recorded 28,798 on May 26. Since then, the pandemic had waned somewhat in the state before surging yet again from the last week of July.

Kerala also registered the highest toll on Tuesday with 173 deaths. India’s death count rose to 480, the highest in five days, with Maharashtra recording 119. The state also added 169 previous fatalities to its total toll. As in the past few days, Odisha reported the third highest deaths at 67, followed by Karnataka (29), TN (27), Andhra (15), Assam (13) and Bengal (12). However, daily numbers continued to dip in Tamil Nadu, which posted 1,585 new cases, down from 1,604 on Monday. Similar declines were reported in Odisha (625 as opposed to 761 on Monday) and Assam (555 compared to 700). tnn