The Kerala government on Saturday called a high-level meeting to assess the Covid-19 situation in the state as it reported 1,544 infections on Saturday in a surge — more than half of all-India coronavirus infections reported on Saturday morning.
Kerala on Saturday reported 1,000 daily infections for the fifth day in a row. It also reported 48 Covid-19 deaths.
Following the high-level meeting, Kerala Health Minister Veena George said the state health department was closely monitoring the situation and there was no new variants.
Kerala has also been reconciling previously unreported Covid-19 deaths to its tally on an almost daily basis, indicating a significant undercounting of coronavirus fatalities in previous Covid-19 waves. Kerala reconciled 20 previously unreported deaths in Union Health Ministry's figures released on Saturday morning. The rest of the country reported six new deaths.
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"Closely monitoring the situation analytically. No new variants. It is the omicron variant so far. The health department is doing the genomic and spike protein sequencing," George told PTI as active patients in the state rose to 7,972.
George said there was no need to worry and urged everyone to wear masks and get vaccinated.
The high-level meeting noted that Ernakulam, Thiruvananthapuram, and Kottayam districts were having the most number of cases and the district authorities were instructed to conduct more tests. District authorities were also instructed to create awareness among the people to take the second dose and the precautionary dose at the regular intervals.
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"Even though all those above 18 years have taken the first dose of vaccine, the second dose vaccination in the same age group is 88 per cent. Till now, 22 per cent of people have taken the precautionary dose. Vaccines will be ensured to all students," said Geroge in a release.
The Covid-19 dashboard of Kerala shows that the state has 65,63,910 confirmed cases till now and 69,790 coronavirus-related deaths.
(With PTI inputs)
