THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The number of people who have recovered from the Covid-19 pandemic in the state has crossed 3.5 lakh mark, with 7,108 people getting cured from the infection on Monday as against a total of 4,138 fresh cases reported on the day. Terming the recovery rates as a significant milestone, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said the weekly spread of the infection has come down by five per cent, while the doubling rate (the time taken for the number of patients to double) has increased to 40 days. If the doubling time was 36.6 days for the third week (October 12-18), it fell to 32.4 in the fourth week (October 18-24). The first week of October saw a sharp decline in the doubling rate in all districts except Thiruvananthapuram. Higher the doubling rate means the slower is the spread of infection.
The test positivity rate remained at a high of 12.4 per cent from 33,345 samples tested on Monday. Even the cases reported per million population is also at a high of 12,329 against a national average of 5,963. The state government has taken steps to increase testing to deal with the situation, said Pinarayi. These include setting up of 167 testing kiosks in public places and conducting 1,39,516 tests per million against the national average of 80,248 tests per million people, he said.
The silver lining is the low death rate that the state has been consistently maintaining throughout these months. With 21 deaths reported on Monday, the total toll rose to 1,533. The case fatality rate continued to remain low at 0.34 per cent, while it is 1.49 per cent nationally. The chief minister attributed the low death rate to better treatment given to the patients. According to him, 94 per cent of the victims had other diseases and over 72 per cent were above the age of 60.
Pinarayi said the state has made enquiries with pharmaceutical companies to conduct Covid-19 vaccine trials in the state. “We have contacted Dr Reddy’s Laboratories for vaccine trial. But they informed us that they had not started the trials in the country. We have also given information about the hospitals in Thrissur, Thiruvananthapuram and Kottayam to the Serum Institute of India,” he said.