Kerala Covid-19 Tracker: Four new cases & two recoveries today, total 140 patients under treatment

 Thiruvananthapuram, April 18: Four new cases of the Coronavirus infection were confirmed in Kerala today. Three cases are from Kannur district and one from Kozhikode district. Three of them (two from Kannur district and one from Kozhikode district) had returned from Dubai and one (from Kannur district) is a case of local transmission. This takes the total number of confirmed Covid-19 cases in Kerala to 399.

 Meanwhile, two more patients under treatment have recovered from Covid-19 as they tested negative. Both are from Kasargod district. So far, 257 patients have recovered from this disease in Kerala. At present, 140 patients are under treatment in different hospitals across the State.

 Continuing with the trend in recent days, the number of people under surveillance across all the districts in the State has further come down to 67,190. Of these, 66,686 are under observation at their homes and 504 are isolated at hospitals. Today 104 persons were admitted to hospitals. Till date, 18,774 samples from people with symptoms have been sent for testing and of these, 17,763 results were tested negative.

 These details were disclosed by the Minister of Health & Social Justice, Smt K K Shailaja in a press release.

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Four new Government labs for Covid-19 testing in Kerala

 The Kerala Government has set up four new real-time PCR labs for testing Coronavirus infection at Ernakulam, Kottayam, Kannur and Manjeri Medical Colleges. The lab at Ernakulam Medical College has received permission from ICMR and has started functioning from today. With this, 11 government labs across the State are conducting the tests for Coronavirus infection. The Health Minister informed that the other three labs would start working as they get the approvals from ICMR.

 The government had approved the purchase of 10 real-time PCR machines to speed up the Covid tests in the State. The new labs were setup using these machines.