Active cases lower than the count before start of third wave

Total number of cases now at 17,105 as 2,190 people test positive

Kerala reported 2,190 new COVID-19 cases on Friday when 32,497 samples were tested in the last 24 hours.

Active case pool in Kerala continues to drop. For the first time, the number of active cases in the State has now gone down below the number of active cases that the State had on January 2 (19,021 cases) when the case graph had began to rise again to signal the third wave. The total number of active cases in the State now is 17,105.

A total of 3,878 persons were reported to have recovered from the disease on Friday. About 8.8% of the active cases are currently hospitalised. The total number of patients admitted with moderate or severe COVID in hospitals in the State now is 1,422. New hospital admissions on Friday was 214.

The current ICU occupancy of COVID patients in both public and private hospitals in the State continues to dip and now stands at 313. The ventilator occupancy is 104.

On Friday, the State declared 75 COVID deaths, of which three occurred within the last 24 hours. Seventy two of the deaths occurred in the last few days but were declared only in the last 24 hours.

The State also added 179 pending COVID deaths to the official list of fatalities. These are deaths that have now been accepted as COVID deaths by the government as per the new guidelines of the Centre and following the appeals filed by families.

In all, the official cumulative COVID-19 case fatality in the State rose to 66,012. Of these, 30,508 (46.2%) deaths were added after October 2021, following the death reconciliation exercise.