The southern States focused on travellers who had arrived from outside to check for COVID-19 infection, while Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Karnataka each reported one death on Saturday.
Kerala had a fresh increase in cases with 62 persons, including 49 expatriates and Non-Resident Keralites (NoRKs) from other States testing positive. The other 13 were cases who had “contact” with known or unknown sources of infection. These include seven health-care workers.
Palakkad district accounted for 19 cases, Kannur (16), Malappuram (8), Alappuzha (5), Kozhikode and Kasaragod (4 each), Kollam (3), Kottayam (2) and Wayanad (1).
Eighteen persons who came from abroad, including the Gulf nations, Singapore and Maldives tested positive, as did 31 persons from other States, primarily, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu. Three persons were reported to have recovered.
The exponential increase in cases in Kerala following the arrival of expatriates and NoRKs from various parts of the country with high disease transmission, threatened to swamp the public health system.
Also read: Coronavirus India lockdown Day 60 updates
As of Saturday, 275 COVID-19 patients were undergoing treatment in various hospitals and Kerala’s overall case tally stood at 794 cases, with 515 having recovered. Kerala had 88,640 arrivals from abroad and from other States.
Nearly 7,000 people were added to the COVID-19 surveillance list, taking the total number under quarantine to 91,084. Of these, 668 people were under observation in isolation wards in hospitals and 90,416 persons were on home or institutional quarantine.So far, samples from 52,771 persons had been tested, of which 51,045 were negative. Under sentinel surveillance to assess any community transmission, another 7,672 samples were tested, of which 7,147 were negative.
Nine more areas in Palakkad and Kannur districts were designated as hotspots, bringing the total of such spots in Kerala to 37.
The death of one person in Krishna district of Andhra Pradesh raised the toll to 56, representing 2.06% of total cases. With 47 fresh cases, the State case tally touched 2,714 including 153 migrants and 48 who recovered during the past day. Five cases were linked to Koyambedu in Chennai, the Health Department said.
As of Saturday, 1,804 persons had recovered and been discharged, while 854 were in hospitals.
Excluding migrants, 2,561 positive cases were reported and 727 patients were under treatment.
Daily fresh cases were being reported in large numbers without any respite since the past several days even as the lockdown was relaxed in most areas in the State. The Health Department stopped revealing details of fresh cases at the district level and some district administrations too stopped issuing details about cases officially.
Andhra Pradesh witnessed an average of one death per day during the past one month. The latest one was in Krishna district, the third most-affected in terms of number of cases and second by fatalities. Also, in the past one month the State detected an average of 61 cases per day and 1,901 cases detected during the past month account for 70% of the total cases.
The State said 9,136 samples were tested in the past day and 2.92 lakh tests were done in all. Tests per million population at 5,486, was the “highest” nationally.
Karnataka found over 200 cases of COVID-19 on Saturday, and its total cases rose to 1,959. The day’s count was 216.
The death reported on Saturday was that of a 32-year old man from Bengaluru Urban, admitted in hospital on May 19 with breathing difficulty. of 216 cases, 186 had travelled to Maharashtra.
The death in Telangana marked the fifth consecutive day of fatalities. The State toll was 49 and positive cases 1,813, with 1,068 discharged.
Four people from Kuwait and 15 migrant workers from Maharashtra tested positive. In all, 119 migrants tested positive.
(With inputs from Vijayawada, Bengaluru and Hyderabad bureaus)
