Months after being prematurely hailed by a section of media for suppressing COVID-19 cases, Kerala continues to remain in the grips of the coronavirus as a total of 187 students and 75 teachers have been reported to contracted the infection in two schools in Malappuram district.
The RT-PCR test conducted at Government Higher Secondary School, Maranchery and Vanneri Higher Secondary School, Perumbadappu on Friday once again punctured the claims of “Kerala Model”, touted by a section of media to hail state against the coronavirus.
By Sunday evening, it was revealed that 148 students and 39 teachers at Maranchery school, 39 students and 36 teachers at Vanneri school were infected with the contagion. The ubiquity of the infection in the schools underscores the extent of the coronavirus spread in the districts—Maranchery, Perambadappu and Veliyamkode in Malappuram and Vadakkekkad in Thrissur.
Samples were collected from tenth standard students in Maranchery school. Swabs of plus two students were going to be taken on Monday. The health department had advised those who had come in contact with the affected students to go on isolation.
The decision to conduct large-scale tests was taken after it was suspected that the students in Maranchery school might be affected with COVID-19. ” As many as 582 students and 50 staff at the Maranchery school were tested for COVID-19,” District Medical Officer(DMO) Dr K Sakeena said.
Dr Sakeena said tests were conducted at the Vanneri school after a teacher had tested positive for the virus. A total of 49 students were tested for the coronavirus, and 36 staff who took the tests were confirmed with the virus.
55 per cent of total active coronavirus cases in India belong to Kerala
It is also pertinent to note that Kerala currently has 55 per cent of the total active coronavirus cases in the country. Out of total 1,43,857 active coronavirus cases in the country, Kerala tops the list of states with 65,413 caseloads.
The fresh wave of coronavirus in Kerala comes months after liberals, along with left-leaning media eagerly applauded the Pinarayi Vijayan-led state government for its handling of the coronavirus outbreak. However, since then the situation in the state has only worsened as the number of COVID-19 cases reported are steadily rising.
The Kerala government is accused of not only underreporting of the coronavirus cases in the state but also has been accused of deliberately hiding the number of people who have succumbed to the pandemic to keep their image intact.
Kerala government accused of underreporting COVID-19 cases
Recently, a group of volunteers in Kerala has made a sensational claim accusing the Kerala government of fudging their COVID data to show a lesser number of coronavirus deaths in the state. The group recorded every Covid-19 related death in the state as per media reports and found that it is much more than the number of deaths reported by the state govt.
The group of researchers have compiled a list containing names of all the people who succumbed to the Chinese pandemic. These group of researches have put months of painstaking research to record data of these deceased persons, picking up from local papers and news networks to report almost all deaths that occurred in the state due to the pandemic.
According to the researchers, there were 3,543 COVID-19 deaths from Kerala till November 2020. However, the official death toll from the disease is 2,023 only. If one goes by the data of recorded deaths by Madhavan and his team, there has been a whopping 43 per cent of underreporting of COVID deaths in Kerala.
