There is a clear deceleration in the rise of fresh COVID-19 cases in Kerala. For the fifth consecutive day, the number of new cases has kept at a low level, even showing a marginal decline. If it was 13 new cases on April 6, it was only nine on Tuesday.
Of the nine cases, 4 are from Kasaragod, 3 from Kannur, and 1 each from Malappuram and Kollam.
In fact, the surge in cases has dropped by more than half. If the last five days had 50 fresh cases, the five days before that had 104 cases.
For the third consecutive day, the number of people under surveillance has also shown a dip. From 1,71,355 on April 4, the number dropped quite dramatically to 1,58,617 the next day. On April 6, an even lesser number, 1,52,804, was placed under surveillance. This has now fallen to 1,46,686 on Tuesday.
Further lockdown relaxations
Dropping danger levels seem to have emboldened the government to further ease restrictions even though there is a week to go for the lockdown to end.
From now on, mobile shops, car workshops, spare parts shops and shops selling durable consumer goods like fans and air conditioners have been allowed to open on specified days. Mobile shops will be open on Sundays. Consumer good shops will also be open only one day a week but the day has not been specified. Workshops will function twice a week (Thursdays and Sundays). Spare parts shops will also open on these days.
Registered electricians, too, can now ply their trade.
No signs of Stage 3 infection
The total number of confirmed cases in Kerala is now 336. Now that 71 had recovered, the highest recovery rate in the country, the active cases are only 263. The virus has also taken two lives by now.
Yet again there are no signs of community transmission. Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, while giving out the numbers on Tuesday, said that six of the nine cases confirmed today had come from outside (four from foreign countries and two had returned from Nizamuddin in Delhi after attending the Tablighi Jamaat). The remaining three are primary contacts of those who had come infected from outside.
Kasaragod continues to top the list but the numbers are falling; there were only four fresh cases on Tuesday. It looks like Kasaragod's peak was on March 27 when it reported 33 fresh cases. Kannur had three new cases and Malappuram and Kollam, one each.
The fears of Malappuram turning out to be another hotspot after a faith healer who returned from Saudi Arabia on March 11 had flouted quarantine norms had more or less waned. The only fresh case in the district was a Tablighi participant.
Kollam is another district where a Tablighi participant had turned positive. The man, a native of Nilamel, had come to Thiruvananthapuram from Nizamuddin via Mumbai. His sample was taken on April 5 at the Parippally Medical College.
This takes the total number of Tablighi returnees who had turned positive in Kerala to 15. Their health condition is said to be stable.
A new dawn in Kasaragod
The focus on scaling up health infrastructure in Kasaragod seems to be paying off. The state-of-the-art COVID Care Centre, which came up in just four days at the academic block of Kasaragod Medical College, admitted its first eight patients on Tuesday.
Six of the nine people who tested positive in Kasaragod on April 6 and two of the four who tested positive on Tuesday were the first patients to be admitted to the facility. Kasaragod has 131 active patients but 19 of them are isolated in hospitals outside the district, 18 in Kannur and one in Kozhikode.
The new COVID Care Centre can take 200 patients at a time. The plan is to soon convert the COVID centre into a 400-bed hospital to take care of any eventuality in the district. There are ICU facilities in Kasaragod General Hospital and Kanhangad District hospital, too.
Pinarayi's displeasure
Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan who has always taken care to engage with the Centre constructively during the COVID-19 phase but struck a rare critical note on Tuesday. He asked the Centre to withdraw the decision to suspend the MP Local Area Development Scheme. “This will directly affect the local development of the state,” he said.
He said there is already a charge that the way the Centre had provided COVID-19 assistance to the states was both unfair and discriminatory. “In the case of Kerala, it was inadequate. In such a situation it is important to employ MPLADS fund for COVID-19 prevention,” Pinarayi said, and added: “Some of our MPs had already taken steps along these lines but the Centre's decision would result in the state losing the benefit.”
He said the MPLADS funds belong to the people of a constituency. “It is wrong to use it as a tool for fund mobilisation. Whether it is a pandemic or a natural disaster, effective interventions have to take place at the grassroots level. So there is an urgent need for these funds at the local decentralised level,” the Chief Minister said.
He then urged Kerala MLAs to take a cue from V S Achuthanandan, P J Joseph, Raju Abraham, Mons Joseph and P T Thomas who had expressed willingness to transfer their MLA Local Area Development funds to spruce up health infrastructure in their constituencies.
Post lockdown measures
The Chief Minister said the report of the Task Force on how to ease lockdown restrictions would be handed over to the Centre. “We will take a call of what to do only after the Centre informs us of its decision,” Pinarayi said.
The 17-member Task Force, which submitted its report to Chief Miniter on April 6, had suggested a three-phase relaxation of the lockdown and had recommended strategies to be adopted in all three phases.
