Thiruvananthapuram: For several weeks when India’s COVID-19 numbers declined, Kerala’s newly affected persons’ numbers hovered around the 5,000-mark, making it the topper in new cases on most days.
Last Friday, when all of India had only 13,193 cases, Kerala accounted for 4,505 of them, or 34 per cent.
A question of perception
That’s enough for many to conclude that the virus is playing havoc in Kerala while the rest of India has overcome the pandemic.
Experts have a different view, though. They say that the state’s competent handling of the pandemic has protected a large number of people from even contracting the disease, and the vast majority of those who contracted it have been saved from death.
Studies show that only about 14 per cent of Keralites have been infected so far, compared to 20-30 per cent across India.
That also means a large number of Keralites continue to be susceptible to the disease.
Death toll is key
“Mortality rate is the key figure, in which Kerala is a leader with the mortality rate as low as 0.4 per cent. It is not whether one gets the disease but whether one survives,” Dr A. Althaf, associate professor and community health services specialist at the Manjeri Medical College told Gulf News.
“Kerala adopted a professional strategy of screening, quarantining, testing, isolating and preventing community transmission through containment zones. This has curtailed the spread,” says Dr Althaf.
Reasons for spike
After very few cases in the early days of the pandemic, there are two key reasons for the spurt in cases in Kerala in later months – the arrival of large numbers of domestic non-residents (from other states in India), and the local body elections which broke up the health and community workers’ teams that were efficiently working in containing the epidemic.
NRIs coming by air – mostly from abroad – could be screened, but Keralites from other states returning home by road, particularly from neighbouring Tamil Nadu and Karnataka could not be put through such stringent checks.
Not to be seen in isolation
Kerala health secretary Rajan Khobragade told Gulf News that the latest statistics that give the impression that Kerala is a hot hub for COVID-19 is wrong.
“The statistic should not be seen in isolation. We have pro-actively approached the pandemic and the fatality rate in the state is the lowest”, Khobragade said.
Some of the statistics bear this out. While Maharashtra has had 2.12 million cases and 51,993 deaths until Friday and Tamil Nadu had 850,000 cases and 12,483 deaths, in Kerala, only 4,150 cases out of 1.04 million turned fatal.
Can’t be complacent
According to Dr Althaf, part of the reason for low deaths in Kerala is the cross-immunity prevalent in the state coming from other vaccines, anti-malaria medication, vitamin B tablets and similar immunity-building measures the state has traditionally adopted.
But he warns that Kerala lacks in some other areas. For example, there have been very few research papers published by the medical fraternity from Kerala in the COVID-19 context, and the state needs a lot more advancement in areas like virology and vaccinology, he says.
