Kerala daily Covid growth rate 3 times that of national average

Kerala was considered a model state in terms of managing the coronavirus but last week it became the eighth state in India to cross three lakh infections.

Only two months ago, it had one of the lowest infection rates in the country but now it ranks third in terms of daily case infections.

Last week, Kerala added 59,901 Covid infections whereas Karnataka added 64,601 and Maharashtra added 70,731. But in terms of the daily growth rate of cases, Kerala ranks first. Infections have been growing at 3.3% daily since the start of October, whereas India’s growth rate has come down to 1%.

Despite the state using more of the less-reliable antigen tests, positivity has been consistently rising. A month ago, just about half of the tests were conducted using RAT but that has jumped to over 70%.

On Saturday, of the 52,067 people tested, 9,016 or 17.32% were found positive.

Until a month ago, Kerala had a positivity of 8.28%. Kerala is also one of the few states that has seen infections jump when the rest of the country is recording a fall. This has led to a dramatic increase in patients in ICUs and on ventilator support. On Saturday, Kerala reported 756 ICU admissions and 180 patients on ventilators, an over two fold increase over 301 ICU patients and 72 ventilators on September 16.

Kerala, however, has one of the lowest case fatality rates— total deaths upon total cases— in the country. On Sunday, Kerala had registered a death rate of 0.3%; in contrast, the national average was five times higher at 1.5%.

On Friday, the Centre announced that it had sent high-level Central teams to Kerala, Karnataka, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and West Bengal.