Thiruvananthapuram, Nov 5 (IANS): Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said on Thursday that figures show that there is a downward trend in the number of fresh Covid cases in the state, but there should be no relaxation in the Covid guidelines.

Speaking to the media, he said that on October 24, the state saw the maximum number of active Covid cases at 97,417.

"On Thursday, that figure stood at 84,087. Likewise, if one compares the daily Covid cases of this week to the same days of the previous week, we can see there is a reduction of 1 to 10 per cent cases. This clearly shows that things are getting better. But this does not mean that we can afford to relax our caution. That should not happen and we all should do our best to maintain all the Covid protocols," said Vijayan.

He said that on Thursday, the state reported 6,820 new Covid cases, while 7,669 people turned Covid negative, taking the total number of recoveries to 3,80,650. As many as 61,388 samples were tested on Thursday. The state reported 26 Covid deaths in the last 24 hours, taking Kerala's death toll to 1,613.

A total of 3,02,919 people are under observation across the state, including 21,351 in different hospitals.

The number of hotspots in the state on Thursday stood at 638.