Kerala on Tuesday logged 22, 129 new Covid-19 cases across the State while the pandemic claimed 156 lives during the last 24 hours. This took the death toll in the State till date to 16, 326. The average Test Positivity Rate on Tuesday was 12.35 percent.
The Legislative Assembly witnessed charges and counter charges between the Opposition UDF and the ruling LDF over the death toll released by the Government. Leader of the Opposition V D Satheeshan claimed that the Government has not included more than 7,000 persons who died of Covid-19 in its list while Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan retorted that the Government does not have anything to hide. “If you have any genuine grievances and evidences, furnish it to us and we will certainly examine the same,” said the Chief Minister while replying to an adjournment motion moved by the Opposition.
Tuesday’s announcement regarding the Covid-19 details came amidst the concern expressed by the Union Government that Kerala’s ten districts had the highest TPR in the country.
Malappuram topped the list of districts with highest number of new Covid-19 cases on Tuesday. While Malappuram registered 4,037 new patients, Thrissur came second with 2,623 patients. Kozhikode (2,397), Ernakulam (2352) and Palakkadu (2115) were the other districts with more than 2,000 patients.
On Tuesday, 1,79 lakhs samples were tested, according to the release issued by the Department of Health. “The number of new Covid-19 cases are likely to go up further in days to come as we are waiting for the impact of the lifting of lock down in connection with the Id festival,” said a Government Physician who has been on Covid-19 treatment duty for the last one year.
He said there were discrepancies in the details submitted by the Department of Health , Kerala Government. “A comparative study between the details released by Tamil Nadu and Kerala reveal that the former is more transparent.
The Tamil Nadu Government’s daily bulletins incorporate the number of RT-PCR tests and antigen Tests while Kerala is silent about the categories of tests carried out. The RT-PCR tests are authentic while the antigen tests are not trustworthy. There were many instances when samples tested negative during antigen turning positive when RT-PCR was done,” said the physician.