Thiruvananthapuram, Sep 30 (IANS): Even as Kerala gets ready to open educational institutions, the Congress on Thursday said that the state government has proved to be an abject failure in tackling Covid.

Senior Congress legislator and former Leader of Opposition Ramesh Chennithala said figures have now proved that Kerala failed to tackle Covid.

"Just look, there were times when 85 per cent of the Covid cases in the country were from Kerala and this is happening when the state's high level of health infrastructure has come in for praise. This clearly shows that the state government has turned out to be an abject failure," said Chennithala.

The daily Covid cases in Kerala increased on Wednesday after 12,161 turned positive out of 90,394 samples tested in the past 24 hours, while the daily test positivity rate also went up to 13.45 per cent.

"All along the Pinarayi Vijayan government banked on the PR activities to claim that things are well under check in Kerala, but the truth was otherwise. Everything was stage managed by not conducting tests, under-stating figures and deaths besides going forward through unscientific guidelines, all contributed to Kerala's poor handling of the pandemic. And the latest is 8,000 Covid deaths have not been accounted for," added Chennithala.

He said Vijayan took people for a ride by conducting press meets on a daily basis and when it really mattered, he disappeared and now with educational institutions all set to open, there should be no laxity in tackling Covid and things should be viewed with seriousness and there should be no callous attitude.

Final year college students are returning to classrooms from the first week of October, while schools start on November 1.