Thiruvananthapuram Kerala reported over 3,000 new COVID-19 cases for the third consecutive day. On Thursday, the State reported 3,162 new cases when 21,394 samples were tested in the past 24 hours.
The test positivity rate on the day was 14.77%, slightly higher than the last seven days’ average of 14.15%. The active cases in the State have now increased to 19,473 cases.
A total of 13 deaths were added to the official COVID-19 fatality list of the State. Two of the deaths were reported in the last 24 hours, while the rest, except one, were recent COVID-related deaths .
Hospitalisations have not gone up and though with the Omicron virus variant currently in circulation, health administrators are not expecting a situation as in February when all hospitals were almost bursting at the seams because of inpatients.
“More patients have been coming into hospitals this week, both outpatients and inpatients, but COVID pneumonia is now rare. The conditions of a few patients with multiple comorbidities and who contracted COVID have worsened. People on dialysis or with heart disease or COPD will need to be admitted if they contract COVID-19. Health-care workers are regularly testing positive and their entire families affected,” Rajeev Jayadevan, chairman of IMA’s national taskforce on COVID-19, said after the weekly meeting of the medical fraternity.
This being the season of many other tropical viral fevers, more children have been contracting upper respiratory infections, with some testing positive for COVID-19, he added.
