Thiruvananthapuram, Jun 22 (IANS): While Kerala cites its successes in tackling Covid, it is now recording close to 17 per cent of new Covid cases reported in the country.

On Monday, India reported 42,640 new Covid-19 cases, which is the lowest in 91 days, and 1,167 deaths, the lowest since April 14, in the last 24 hours as per the Union Health Ministry and Kerala had recorded 7,499 new Covid cases.

On Tuesday, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan told the media that the state saw 12,617 new Covid cases from 1,17,720 samples sent for testing in the past 24 hours and the test positivity rate was 10.72 per cent.

He also pointed out that the number of active cases rose to 1,00,437 on Tuesday while 11,730 people turned negative taking the total cured to 27,16,284.

"We can relax only after we bring down the TPR below 5 per cent. We have to be very cautious as experts have predicted a third wave and all of us have to be very careful not to slacken our fight against Covid. Onam festival season is also approaching. We have decided to relax norms according to our earlier decided test positivity rate. In areas where the TPR is low, banks will work on all days, while in other places, they will work every other day," said Vijayan.

"It has also been decided to open places of worship at places where the TPR is below 20 per cent, but not more than 15 people can be there at a time. Classes in Medical Colleges in the state will open on July 1 as all the medical students have by now received both the doses of vaccination. We are now working toward vaccinating all the college students and as and when it takes place, we will consider opening of the colleges also," he added.

Vijayan said that there were 141 fresh Covid deaths, taking the death toll to 12,295.

Meanwhile, leading private sector bank Federal Bank on Tuesday donated 10,000 vaccine carriers, valued at Rs 92.04 lakh, to the state government.