Barely, a week after the Kerala government declared that the COVID-19 curve has been flattened, the state on Thursday saw a sharp spike in new
cases with 26 people, including seven foreign returnees and police personnel, testing positive for the virus, taking the total to 560.
The active cases, the number of people under treatment, also rose to 64 compared to just 16 on last Friday, when only a solitary fresh infection was reported.
"This is a sign of danger we are facing. However, we can overcome this difficult time", Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said, referring to the sudden jump in the last two days.
On May 8, Vijayan had declared that the state has flattened the curve but cautioned it needed to be careful to avoid another wave of the deadly virus while but asserting his government was ready to fight it in such an event.
On Thursday, three Congress MPs -- T N Prathapan, V K Sreekandan and Ramya Haridas and MLAs Shafi Parambil and Anil Akkara, all from Palakkad and Thrissur districts, have been asked be under home quarantine as they were suspected to have come into contact with a man at Walayar checkpost who later tested positive for COVID-19, officials said.
The Congress leaders had staged a protest at Walayar check-post, bordering Tamil Nadu, on May 9 accusing the LDF government of showing "apathy towards Keralites stranded across the border and overseas." They had also met people who were stranded at the border.
The five politicians are among 172 people, including 25 police personnel and media persons, who have been asked by the Medical Board to go on quarantine in Palakkad district.
In Wayanad district, at least 70 police personnel, including the district police chief, R Illango, have gone on quarantine as a precautionary measure after their three colleagues tested positive.
Briefing the media on COVID-19 situation, Vijayan said ten of the new cases were from Kasaragod district, while Malappuram reported five, Palakkad and Wayanad three each,
Kannur two and Pathnamthitta, Idukki and Kozhikode districts one case each. Three people -- two from Kollam and one from Kannur --
have recovered, he told reporters here. The tally of COVID-19 cases in the state has risen to 560. Of the fresh cases, fourteen came from outside the state -- seven from abroad, two from Chennai, four from Mumbai and one person from Bengaluru, Vijayan said.
Eleven people had been infected through contact. In Idukki, a bakery owner, whose sample was taken as part of sentinel surveillance, has tested positive.
After single-digit fresh cases, the state has been seeing an increase in the past couple of days. On Wednesday, ten people had tested positive and on Thursday it increased to 26, Vijayan said.
Over 36,000 people were under observation with 548 of them in hospitals.
The state, whose handling of the COVID-19 cases has won praise from various quarters, had been apprehensive of a spike in cases with the return of expatriates and those stranded in other states.
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