Thiruvananthapuram: Rising COVID-19 cases in Kerala, coupled with the recent outbreak of the Zika virus, is causing concern to the health authorities here as the southern state battles to bring down the fresh infections.
After winning accolades for its “Kerala model” of combating the contagion about a year ago, the state is now seeing daily fresh cases between 12,000 to 15,000 with no end in sight to the ‘prolonged surge’, as some experts put it.
The state had reported 14,087 fresh covid infections on Saturday and 109 deaths taking the total caseload to 30,39,029 and toll to 14,380. The active cases touched 1,13,115.
Health Minister Veena George had recently said the virus numbers spiked due to certain unlock measures and that they were expected to go down.
While on June 1 this year, Kerala reported 19,760 positive cases, there was a slight decline for a week with 9,313 new cases being recorded on June 7.
However, two days later it again shot up to 16,204. For over a…