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Kerala stopping daily bulletin on Covid a hasty decision: Experts
The health department also said there was no Covid-19 related death since April 1. Tests also dwindle from 120,000 in January 2022 to 10,673 on the last day of the bulletin.
Medical experts have expressed concern over the Kerala government’s decision to discontinue the daily bulletin on Covid-19 cases due to a declining trend, saying that it was a hasty decision.
On Monday, the state government issued a statement saying that the daily exercise, which began on January 30, 2020, stopped on April 10.
“#Kerala decided to discontinue daily #Covid-19 updates from yesterday & that leaves us with very “comfortable” figure for the country as #Kerala was contributing about 30 per cent of active cases till now,” tweeted public health policy expert Rijo M John. He also tweeted a digital image from the official portal covid19bharat.org.
“It seems the government is in hurry to come out of the pandemic mess. It will give a wrong signal to people in general,” said public health expert Dr S S Lal, adding that he has no idea why the state stopped publishing data.
Initially, chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan held a press conference at 6 pm daily to release the data, and later it was confined to social media posts every evening. On the last day (April 10), the state reported 223 new cases with a test positivity rate of 2 per cent.
The health department also said there was no Covid-19 related death since April 1. Tests also dwindle from 120,000 in January 2022 to 10,673 on the last day of the bulletin.
A senior health ministry official, who did not want to be quoted, said threat perception has receded and there was no point in releasing details every day. But he said it was not a signal to put the guard down, and it is ideal to follow physical distancing and mask. He said the number of bulletins from the state exceeded bulletins issued by the World Health Organisation (WHO) during the pandemic.
He said the health department will monitor the situation closely and will come out with monthly bulletins from next month. “We are not saying we are cent per cent safe. But we feel disease transmission in the state came down considerably, and it ceased to be a threat,” he said.
A look at the Covid-19 statistics shows the highest cases were reported on January 25, with 55.475 cases and a TPR of 42 per cent. In daily cases and deaths, the state was in the second spot after Maharashtra. According to the last bulletin, the total fatalities in Kerala are 68,365.
