THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Kerala recorded 29, 803 new Covid cases on Tuesday, informed a press release issued by the health department. With this, the number of active cases touched 2,55,406 in the state.

With 177 new fatalities, the death toll mounted to 7731.

The test positivity rate was recorded at 20.84 percent.

33,397 recoveries were also reported in the state. So far 21,32,071 people have recovered from the disease.

A total of 1,43,028 samples were tested in the last 24 hours. In total, 1,90,24,615 samples including routine sample, sentinel sample, CBNAAT, Truenat, POCT, PCR, RTLAMP, antigen were sent for the tests.

None returned from the UK, South Africa and Brazil tested positive for Covid-19 in the last 24 hours. So far, 126 people including 116 UK returnees, 9 from South Africa, and 1 from Brazil tested positive for the virus infection. 124 of them have recovered. So far, 11 patients have been infected with the mutant virus strain.

202 of the new COVID patients were returned from outside the state. 27,502 people contracted the virus through contact. The infection source of 2005 patients remains unidentified.

94 health workers also tested positive for Covid-19.

9,04,178 people are currently under observation in the state. Out of this 8,26,698 people are under home/institutional quarantine and 38,740 people are in hospitals. 3303 people were taken to hospitals on Tuesday.

No place was added to the list of hotspots on Tuesday and no place was removed from the list. Currently, there are 879 hotspots in the state.