There has been a steep rise in COVID-19 cases in Kerala after the festival of Onam which has taken India’s case tally in the week ending Sunday to an eight-week high. Kerala alone accounted for 66% of all cases during this period.

India registered over 2.9 lakh new infections during the week from August 23-29, with an increase of 32% from the numbers over the previous seven days. This represents the highest number of weekly cases since the week from June 28-July 4 when the country registered 3.05 lakh cases.

Kerala recorded more than 1.9 lakh cases, which translates to a huge increase of 55% from the figure of 1.25 lakh recorded over the preceding week. This has been the highest number of cases registered by the state over a span of 14 weeks since May 16-23 and the highest by any state in India in 13 weeks.

None of the neighboring states of Kerala has recorded a significant increase in the number of infections this week. The only other big state to report a rise in weekly cases is Maharashtra, with a marginal surge of less than 1%.

Kerala is also the second state in the country after Maharashtra to report over 40 lakh COVID cases thus far. 

There was an increase in deaths of 10.5% during the week with a total of 3,439 deaths reported during the period, compared to 3,111 over the previous week.

The country recorded over 40,000 daily cases for the fifth consecutive day, with Sunday’s figures standing at 43,399 (numbers from Jharkhand awaited). A total of 373 fatalities were recorded while the active cases increased by around 7,000 to stand at 3.8 lakh. Over 2.1 lakh of these were in Kerala.

Source: ET Healthworld