On May 14, 2020, British Daily newspaper The Guardian had hailed Kerala’s health Minister KK Shailaja as ‘rockstar’.
It credited KK Shailaja for having identified the dangerous virus as early as January 20 and having equipped Kerala’s health infrastructure. KK Shailaja credited herself that because of the efforts, there were only 524 cases of Chinese coronavirus in Kerala by 14th May, 2020.
Four months since that ‘victory’ over virus, Kerala has recorded over 1,67,000 coronavirus cases. As of now, over 52,000 active coronavirus cases are there in the state.
Kerala has 5th highest active caseload for coronavirus in India presently. While most states have been showing higher recoveries than new cases including the worst affect Maharashtra, Kerala has been showing a significant rise of new cases. This even though its testing remains as low as 27.2 lakh.
As can be seen from above graphs, the active cases in Kerala have been steadily increasing. On September 1, 2020, Kerala had 22,512 active cases. Today, the active cases have more than doubled. But no one is talking about it.
In fact, with rising cases, Kerala has dropped testing. On Friday, Kerala tested 59,610 samples, of which 7006 tested positive, taking positivity rate to 11.75%. To put things in perspective, Uttar Pradesh tested 1,56,928 samples on Friday, of which 4,302 tested positive. That is a positivity rate of 2.74%. Uttar Pradesh, one of the most populous states of India, has little over 57,000 active cases, just about 5,000 cases more than Kerala, that had ‘won’ the coronavirus battle as early as February this year.
But no one is talking about it. No one is talking about the fact that instead of scaling up the testing, Kerala has actually scaled it down. Health experts had warned as early as May itself that Kerala’s testing rate is poor and the CM had then rubbished it.
No testing, no new cases. All is well.
The hold that communists have over media ensured that these facts regarding Kerala’s terrible management of coronavirus crisis gets pushed under the rug. No one is holding anyone accountable. KK Shailaja is not giving interviews blaming other states for the crisis. No media house is holding the communist government accountable for being unable to arrest the infection. No one is questioning for high positivity rate.
Just like China.