Kerala reports over 16,000 fresh Covid-19 cases in last 24 hours

Kerala on Friday registered 16,338 fresh COVID-19 cases, raising the state's caseload to 53,33,828, a government bulletin said.

The southern state had reported 13,468 cases on Thursday.

Kerala on Friday also reported 199 deaths that raised the total fatalities in the state to 50,568, according to the government release.

Of the latest deaths, 20 were recorded over the last few days and 179 designated as COVID-19 deaths after receiving appeals based on the new guidelines of the Centre and the directions of the Supreme Court.

With 3,848 more people recovering from the virus since Thursday, the total recoveries reached 52,14,862.

However, as the number of recoveries were much less than the new COVID-19 cases, the active cases rose to 76,819, the release said.

As many as 68,971 samples were tested in the last 24 hours.

Among the 14 districts, Thiruvananthapuram recorded the highest with 3,556 fresh cases followed by Ernakulam (3,198), Kozhikode (1,567), Thrissur (1,389) and Kottayam (1103).

Of the new cases, 116 were health workers, 135 from outside the state and 15,228 infected through contacts while the source of infection was not clear in 859 people, the release said.

There are currently 1,72,295 people under surveillance in various districts, of whom 1,68,657 are in home or institutional quarantine and 3,638 in hospitals, the release said.