Kerala reported more than half of the total Covid-19 cases recorded in the country in the past seven days, the central government said on Tuesday.
At a joint press briefing on the pandemic, an official said that 37 districts across nine states, including Kerala (11 districts) and Tamil Nadu (seven districts), were showing a rising trend in daily new Covid-19 cases over the last two weeks.

Hovering over the 13 percent mark for a while, the daily Covid test positivity rate in Kerala on Tuesday jumped to 15.91 percent, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said. In a statement issued here, he said that 21,119 people turned Covid positive after 1,32,769 samples were tested in the past 24 hours.

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This is the first time in a few weeks that the daily TPR has crossed 15 percent, while Kerala continues to have more than 50 percent of the daily new cases in the country.

As many as 44 districts across 11 states and union territories reported a weekly positivity rate of more than 10 percent, the official said. Kerala reported 51.51 percent of the total Covid-19 cases recorded in India in the past seven days, he said.

With Kerala now heading for Onam festival season, it remains to be seen what would be impacted as most of the restrictions have been relaxed till August 22, including the lifting of triple lockdown on Sundays.

According to the central government, the reproduction number that denotes the spread of COVID-19 was more than 1 in five states — Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh.

The increasing trend of reproduction number in some states is a cause of concern, although there is stabilization in COVID-19 cases in the country, it said, adding there are significant reasons to enforce pandemic control measures.

The government said Delta Plus variant of SARS-CoV-2 has been detected in 86 samples in India, including 34 in Maharashtra, as on August 9.

India logged 28,204 new coronavirus infections, the lowest in 147 days, taking the total tally of cases to 3,19,98,158, while the active cases fell to 3,88,508, the lowest in 139 days, according to the Union Health Ministry data updated on Tuesday. The death toll has climbed to 4,28,682 with 373 fresh fatalities, the data updated at 8 am showed.