Assuming that Kerala's borders are tightly manned and taking at face value Chief Minister Pinaryi Vijayan's assurance that there is no community transmission, it looks like new COVID-19 patients are likely to drop to zero by the middle of the next week.
After three days of higher numbers, provoking fears of a revival in viral activity, Kerala has recorded just three new COVID-19 cases in Kerala on Friday. The disturbingly high numbers in the last three days (19, 11 and 10) can be attributed to the huge step up in testing in Kannur.
After foreign returnees in the district began showing late symptoms, the government had resolved to collect samples from all untested returnees in home quarantine in the district, regardless of whether they have symptoms or not.
Results of only less than 40, including the 15 hospitalised today, now remain to be declared. The district health authorities are not expecting more than five positive cases among the last pool of suspected individuals.
As a further indication that things have begun to cool, there have been no new cases in Kannur for the second consecutive day. On the other hand, three people have recovered in Kannur today, bringing down the active cases in the district to 57.
It is like the virus has been banished from Kasaragod, the district that had been fueling COVID-19 numbers in Kerala till the first week of April. There, too, just about 20 samples of people who have not yet shown any symptoms remain to be tested.
The number of hospitalisations, too, has dwindled considerably. Only two were admitted to hospitals in Kasaragod today. With five people getting cured in Kasaragod, the active cases in the district have come down to 18.
The low number of fresh cases on Friday makes the number of recoveries on the day, 15, look good; 331 people have now recovered. As a result, the active cases in Kerala, after showing an upturn in the last two days, has once again nosedived. From 129 on April 23, it has slipped to 116. This means just a quarter of the total confirmed cases, which touched 450 on Friday, remains to be cured.
Spike before the calm
Before fresh cases vanish by the middle of next week, there is a chance of a minor eruption in between. The government has already begun a hunt for community transmission in suspected clusters, mainly among the frontline warrior groups like health workers and policemen and also in geographical areas like Thalassery in Kannur and Pothencode in Thiruvananthapuram where silent transmission is feared.
“These tests are by way of abundant caution. We are just trying to rule out even the most unlikely events. We are not expecting any positive cases,” a top health official said.
Invisible viral radiance
At the moment, such optimism cannot outshine the possibility of the virus spreading stealthily in unlikely areas. For instance, the source of infection of the four-month-old child who died in Kozhikode Medical College is still a mystery. The parents have tested negative.
Same is the case of a Kottayam health worker who had tested positive on April 23. The male nurse tested positive 30 days after he came home from Thiruvananthapuram. Health officials say he could have probably got it from Kottayam. But from where is a bewildering question as he had been in quarantine for 28 days.
A mother and son who had returned from Mysore to Idukki on March 25 had tested positive only on April 23, 29 days after their return. A 30-year-old woman who had returned to Idukki from Chennai on March 18 had tested positive after 36 days.
Though the official version is they had come infected from other sates (Karnataka and Tamil Nadu), unofficially it is conceded that all the three could have been infected after their return, within Kerala's borders. If so, their source of infection is also a terrifying blank.
Equally mystifying is the sizable number of foreign returnees in north Kerala, mostly in Kannur, who were declared positive very late. If they had go infected in Kerala, it again is a clear sign that the virus is having a free run outside Kerala's surveillance network.
Borderline fears
After the airports, Kerala's porous borders are the new sensitive points. Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said people from other states were infiltrating into Kerala from other states. He said 57 people who had infiltrated into Kannur from Kodagu in Karnataka had been intercepted and shifted to Corona Care Centres in Kannur's Iritty.
Unmanned borders could defeat Kerala's fight against the virus. Kollam district, which was gradually steadying, saw two positive cases after a man from Kulathupuzha sneaked into a COVID-19 hotspot in Tamil Nadu, and returned. One of his primary contacts, a 77-year-old woman had also tested positive. This woman is a potential super-spreader as she is a regular visitor to at least 40 houses in the area.
Her contacts have only been asked to quarantine themselves, they have not yet been tested.
