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Amid a surge in daily COVID cases in Kerala, the state has announced a complete lockdown on the weekend (31 July-1 August) with the same guidelines that were issued last month, on 12-13 June.
On Wednesday, 28 July, Kerala recorded 22,056 new COVID-19 cases, taking the total number of cases to 33,27,301, with 131 more deaths.
This has also been corroborated by serosurveys as the latest national sero survey showed that for every infection that gets detected, about 25 go unreported.
Then, why are daily cases rising in the state? Why is the state topping the number of active cases in the country?
In a sero survey conducted across 20 Indian states, while at least two-thirds of the population was found to have COVID-19 antibodies, Kerala was observed to have the least, indicated a higher uninfected population.
Madhya Pradesh was recorded to have the highest seroprevalence – 79 percent, while Kerala was observed to have 44.4 percent, making the current rise puzzling.
Professor Gautam Menon had written in May, Kerala continues to be hard hit, and is an enduring puzzle. It is at least encouraging that deaths there remain low.
Further, Menon told The Quint, "So, Kerala is a mystery. I feel that Kerala was more successful than other states in terms of controlling its cases and its numbers and in terms of controlling its infections. It shut down fairly stringently and it unlocked fairly rigorously. If you look at the sero surveys conducted in Kerala, it was found that about 10% of people had prior infection by 10th of January compared to numbers like 20% plus across all of India on average."
Kerala’s daily COVID cases had started dropping in May and came close to 10,000 daily cases. However, by mid-July, the cases began to see a gradual rise, which has been attributed to the opening up of restrictions.
In an earlier interview with The Quint, Senior virologist Dr Jacob T John explained, “The fast pace of infection is due to the Delta variant. The earlier Wuhan B614G variant showed how one infected person could infect two others. The Delta variant has showed, one person that infect six people.”
Kerala has so far given the first vaccine dose to approximately 38 percent of its population (1.33 crore).
Kerala, however, has been reporting a low mortality rate, which is being cited as evidence of the state’s efficient handling of the pandemic.
(With inputs from IndiaSpend)
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