THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: With the total number of Covid cases crossing one lakh and daily cases breaching the 3,000-mark with alarming frequency, Health Minister KK Shailaja on Friday said the coming weeks will be a “testing time” for the state. She urged the public to exercise ‘extreme caution’ so as to avoid a situation in which hospitals run out of beds for Covid patients.The health minister pointed out that the number of Covid patients had totalled 50,000 on August 19. Within a month, their number more than doubled to over one lakh.
She added that experts have cautioned that the number of Covid cases will witness a steep rise in the coming weeks. However, due to a united fight put up by the health workers and the entire government machinery against the pandemic, the number of deaths could be contained to 410 despite over one lakh positive cases being recorded, Shailaja said.
“While the Covid death rate in other states is around four to 10 per cent, it is only 0.4 per cent in our state. While over one lakh people contracted the disease, 73,904 people have recovered. The state currently has 27,877 people under treatment,” she said. Shailaja said the state had just one Covid testing facility — NIV, Alappuzha — when the first case was reported. Now, Covid tests are being done in 33 centres including 23 government labs and 10 in the private sector. Besides, tests such as antigen test, Xpert CBNAAT and TrueNat are being conducted in over 800 government and 300 private labs. Shailaja said the number of daily tests has been ramped up to 45,000 and the government is planning to further scale up daily testing.