Thiruvananthapuram, Jul 30 (IANS): Kerala on Friday saw over 20,000 Covid cases for the fourth day in succession, making it account for 50 per cent of the country's daily tally.

In a statement issued here, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said 20,772 people turned positive after 1,52,639 samples were tested in the past 24 hours.

The test positivity rate was 13.61 per cent, while the total number of active cases was 1,60,824.

Incidentally all these basic indicators for the past few days have been showing that Kerala is leading in all the respects, and a special health team from Delhi has arrived in the state and will now split into two and travel around to find out how best things can be contained.

Friday also saw 115 new deaths, taking the death toll to 16,701.

Meanwhile with the state observing lockdown based on the TPR, there were 323 local bodies with a TPR of above 15 per cent, while in 355, it is between 10 to 15 per cent, in 294, between 5 to 10 per cent and in 62, it was below 5 per cent.