Kerala has reported eight new cases of the Covid-19 infection on Tuesday, a slight spike from the trend of the two days when the State had added two and three to the list.

Health Minister KK Shailaja said that of the eight, four were from Kannur district; three from Kozhikode; and one from Kasaragod.

These are all contiguous districts in the northern part of the State and had witnessed an influx of non-residents arriving home before the travel bans came into place. And some of them had thrown the mandatory quarantine norms to the winds and had easily mixed with the public, some of whom are testing positive even now.

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Shailaja more or less substantiated this saying that, of the eight new patients reported on Tuesday, five have travelled from Dubai and the rest were infected through local contact.

The erring Kasaragod patients are said to have triggered the third wave of infections in the State.

Wave of infections

In the first wave of infections, three students arriving from Wuhan, the Covid-19 hotbed in China, had imported virus into the state.

In the second wave, a family arriving from affected Italy had flouted medical screening at the CIAL Airport in Kochi, and went on to set up a cluster in Pathanamthitta, which have since been more or less defused.

And a third wave was set up by those returning from the Tablighi Jamaat in Nizamuddin in New Delhi.

More patients recover

Meanwhile, Tuesday also saw 13 patients under treatment across the state recovering from the infection, carrying on a trend in which they have out-counted the number of people of getting infected on a day – which had touched a peak of 39 on March 28.

Six of those recovering on Tuesday were drawn from the worst-hit Kasaragod; two each from Ernakulam and Palakkad; and one each from Kollam, Thrissur and Malappuram, Shailaja said.

As on date, 173 patients are undergoing treatment in hospitals across the State, while 211 patients have totally recovered from the infection.

The number of people under surveillance in has further come down to 1,07,075. Of these, 1,06,511 are under observation at their homes and 564 are isolated in hospitals.

The day also saw 81 persons being admitted into hospitals with symptoms. So far, 16,235 samples from people with symptoms have been sent for testing and the results of 15,488 samples have been reported negative.

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