Thiruvananthapuram, Feb 10 (IANS): Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Wednesday said that the best way to tackle Covid is to prevent its spread and Kerala is doing that right from the start.

Interacting with the media here, he said that on Wednesday, the state saw 5,980 people test Covid positive, while 5,745 recovered.

"In the past 24 hours, 80,106 samples were sent for testing and we will soon achieve daily testing of one lakh everyday, of which 75 per cent would be RT-PCR tests," he said.

Vijayan claimed that that there are concerted attempts to spread the canard that the prevalence of Covid in Kerala is the highest in the country, but a series of studies have proved that the spread of Covid was kept down in the state.

"While one in 4 people in the country have turned positive, but in Kerala, that figure is one in 10 people. This is the truth, but there have been attempts to portray our state in poor light. So we have to continue our vigil and the only way is prevention of the spread and for that all have to take part in it," he said.

He said the total number of Covid positive cases on January 24 was 72,891 and now, it has come down to 64,346 cases.

On Wednesday, 18 Covid deaths were reported, taking the total death toll to 3,920.

Across the state, there were 2,34,767 people under observation, including 10,389 in hospitals.

There are 459 hotspots in the state.