NEW DELHI: Both Kerala and Bengal crossed the mark of three lakh Covid-19 cases on Tuesday even as fresh infections in the country remained below the 65,000-figure and fatalities below 800 for the second day in a row.
After a dip on Monday, fresh infections in Kerala rose again and at 8,764 they were the highest in the country. For the second consecutive day on Tuesday, Maharashtra — which had reported the highest daily cases in the country for most days in the last seven months — ranked second among the states with 8,522 infections. While Kerala reported more cases than Maharashtra on Tuesday, it was Karnataka on Monday.
With 63,655 fresh infections, India’s caseload rose to 72,32,981 and with 740 deaths the cumulative toll went up to 1,10,568. While 62,93,524 patients have recovered from the virus, active cases in the country dropped by nearly 13,000 to 8,28,889 infections, according to the data collated from various state governments.
While India’s active cases have been dipping for the last few weeks and continued to slide for the 12th consecutive day on Tuesday, the trend is quite opposite in Kerala. The growth in India’s active cases has been in the negative (-11%) in the last four weeks, but in Kerala, active cases have shot up by 233% in the same period, according to Mysore Sanjeev, convenor, Project Jeevan Raksha, a public-private partnership initiative.
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The rise of active cases in Kerala, once hailed as a model state in combating the outbreak, shows that the coronavirus is a sly and persistent enemy that can strike even when it appears to have been controlled. Other states, currently experiencing a dip in daily cases, need to take a lesson from this.
Kerala and Bengal on Tuesday became the seventh and eighth states respectively to have recorded more than three lakh Covid cases. The other states which crossed that grim milestone earlier are Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh and Delhi.
On Tuesday, Maharashtra added 8,522 new cases and 187 fatalities, taking the total caseload to 15,43,837 and total fatalities to 40,701.
In Tamil Nadu, fresh cases dropped below 5,000 for the second consecutive day and deaths too were below 60.
