Thiruvananthapuram, Oct 19 (IANS): Under fire from the principal opposition parties for failing to contain the spike in the number of Covid cases in Kerala, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said on Monday that the state has been doing its best to contain the spread of coronavirus, and is not going after any award for that.

With active cases now touching 92,731 and daily cases crossing the 10,000-mark for the past few days, the Congress and the BJP are up in arms against Vijayan for failing to tackle the virus spread.

"We have done the best in delaying the spike in cases. Look at Italy and what happened there when cases spiked at one go and the mortality rate reached 16 deaths in every 100 cases. In Kerala, the fatality rate has come down from 0.77 per cent in May to 0.38 per cent in September and till date in October it stands at 0.25 per cent. No one should forget that the country's first case was reported here and we saw to it that there was no spread then," said Vijayan.

"Eeverybody appreciated what we did when the pandemic started. We never went after awards. It is understandable that some people became restless when we got appreciated for containing the spread," said Vijayan.

In a veiled reply to Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan's comments that Kerala is paying the price for relaxing Covid norms during the Onam celebrations, Vijayan denied that there was no laxity in restrictions during Onam.

"It's wrong to say that norms were relaxed during Onam. Everything was done with proper controls. There is a concerted attempt from certain quarters to portray Kerala in poor light," added Vijayan.

The Chief Minister said that 5,022 new Covid cases were reported on Monday, while 7,469 people turned negative to take the tally of recoveries to 2,52,868. With 21 deaths on Monday, Kerala's Covid death toll mounted to 1,182.

At present there are 2,77,291 people under observation at various places, including 23,809 in hospitals.

The state presently has 636 hotspots.