Scary Rise: Kerala Active Corona Cases double in 8 days!!

Kerala whose health minister has received a lot of international praise recently is suddenly struggling. Like the batsman who has reached 90 in 90 balls and struggling for last 10 overs to score 10 runs, Kerala is faltering due to a new bowler called ‘returning migrants’

The number of active cases have doubled in the last 8 days and is now at 774. A month ago it was 95 cases. Total number of deaths has also doubled in the last 9 days though it is quite low.

What has gone wrong for Kerala?

1. Migrants: A large number of Cases are Keralites returning from other Countries or other States. Many of them are returning from regions with high incidence of Corona. This is contributing significantly to the load. But this is not the only reason
2. Testing: Contrary to what people think, Kerala is not the best in Testing in the country. Forget the country, it is not even the best in the South. TN, Andhra and Karnataka have tested much more than Kerala. Even as lakhs of migrants returned to Kerala, it took the State nearly 3 weeks to double its tests which was anyway on the lower side at least as far as South India is concerned.
3. Poor Contact Tracing: Kerala had a contact tracing efficacy of 51%. Essentially, the Government of Kerala was sure about how someone got COVID-19 only in 51% of the cases (ICMR Data). While this is not the worst in the country, it is not high either. This leads to lot of asymptomatic cases remaining in the population and quietly spreading the infection

In sum, Kerala’s performance has suddenly deteriorated for many reasons. Given its massive healthcare systems, it is likely they will recover in 2-3 weeks. However until then, the bad news may keep piling up.