THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Despite COVID-19 cases in Kerala showing a dip in the past few days, Health Minister K K Shailaja on Monday said it was not yet time to be "completely relieved" as neighbouring states were seeing a spike in numbers, which was causing concern.
"We want to bring down the graph of positive cases. That is our effort. We feel our efforts are paying dividends, if we go by the results in the last few days. However, we cannot be completely relieved just because cases in the state has dipped. It is not enough if the virus are under control in Kerala. It is a pandemic. The cases in our neighbouring states are increasing and that is a cause of concern," the minister told reporters.
While Tamil Nadu has so far reported 1,075 positive cases and 11 deaths, Karnataka accounts for 247 cases, which includes six deaths and 59 discharges.
The nature of this virus is such that at times there will be very few positive cases and suddenly there will be a spurt if a contact fails to be detected, resulting in the infection being transmitted to more people, the minister said.
"So, we need to be extremely careful. That is the message we want to give. Yesterday, there were only two cases", she said adding there have been instances when from 9, COVID-19 cases have jumped to 24 the very next day in the state.
Strict quarantine, meticulous contact tracing and isolation system have all helped the state to successfully treat the positive cases.
Kerala reported two coronavirus cases on Sunday and 36 were reported cured.
Kasaragod, the hotspot in the state which had the most number of COVID-19 cases, reported 28 cured cases of the total 36.
Presently, 194 patients are under treatment across various hospitals in the state while 1.16 lakh people under observation and 179 people have been cured.
There have been two fatalities.