Vishnu Varma

On Friday night, minutes after an Air India Express plane crashed out of the Kozhikode airport runway into a ditch, Dr Ahmad's phone began ringing. His was the closest hospital to the crash site and he was told to prepare for a flurry of severely-injured patients.

Kerala Rains, Weather Forecast Today: The remoteness of the area, broken power and communication lines, heavy fog and uninterrupted rainfall are all seen as factors impacting effective relief operations at the landslide site.

Over the last two days, the nature and magnitude of the rains across the state point to troubling indicators.

Kerala has seen several deaths of persons who tested positive for Covid posthumously, rankling concerns that such cases are being detected late and that the spread of the infection is much larger than being affirmed by the government.

The 53-year-old has been at the heart of volunteering efforts; distributing food kits during Iftar in labour camps, dispatching volunteers and aid when Kerala was in the throes of the century's biggest deluge in 2018 to finding quarantine centres for asymptomatic people in the UAE during Covid-19.

"Chennithala is the son of an RSS sympathiser and it's no surprise that Janmabhumi (mouthpiece of the RSS in Kerala) advocated for him. He dons the uniform of RSS workers in Kerala, better than them," said Kodiyeri Balakrishnan.

The benefits of wearing face coverings and gloves have come to light after a total of 2,123 people are believed to have been spared from contracting the coronavirus infection after visiting a laboratory where four staff members tested positive for the virus.

Orange-level rain alerts have been issued by the India Meteorological Department (IMD) for Kottayam, Ernakulam, Thrissur and Palakkad districts.

The high caseload in Thiruvananthapuram district is largely attributed to the spillover of the Covid-19 infection into the community, especially in the coastal hamlets.

Aditya, India's first solar-powered ferry that commenced operations in 2017 in Kerala's Vembanad backwaters, has won the prestigious Gustave Trouve Award for Excellence in Electric Boats and Boating.

“All these thoughts of how I would take care of the baby never came to me, for some reason. I just knew that his parents are Covid-positive and that it would not be safe for him to continue in their care.”

Fathima has been booked under sections 13, 14, and 15 of POCSO Act, section 67B(d) of the Information Technology Act, and section 75 of the Juvenile Justice Act at the Ernakulam Town police station based on a complaint filed by a local BJP leader.

“In such situations, the value of a human being is at stake and it doesn’t matter what religion he or she may have belonged to.”

For the past two weeks, Chellanam has been under a tight lockdown after nearly 200 people in the village got infected with Covid-19, starting from an elderly fishworker at the local harbour.

“They are all ready to give (plasma). Because, at the hospital, we have treated all patients with utmost love and care. Now, they are returning the same love and care by doubling it.”

Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, at the daily briefing, said community transmission of the coronavirus is observed to have taken place in the coastal neighbourhoods of Pulluvila and Poonthura in Thiruvananthapuram district.

Last week, Sivasankar was shunted out from his posts of principal secretary to CM and IT secretary after his name propped up in connection with the involvement of Swapna Suresh who has been charged by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in the smuggling racket.

Earlier this week, Sivasankar was removed from the posts of principal secretary to CM and Information Technology secretary after news reports of his association with Swapna Suresh, charged by the National Investigation Agency in the smuggling racket.

On Friday morning, dozens of men and women came onto the streets in the village agitating against the tight lockdown restrictions and claiming that the health department's data on infections among them was hyped. They protested without masks and by abandoning social distancing regulations.

In the petition, accessed by indianexpress.com, Suresh, currently on the run, stated that though she resigned from the consulate in September 2019 and joined PricewaterhouseCoopers as a contractual staff, she continued to work closely with the consulate under 'work on request basis'.

The origin of the infection in the area is suspected to be a wholesale fish vendor at the local Kumarichanda market.

Kerala's 'triple lockdown' strategy entails focused interventions by the police at three different levels to minimise the impact of the community spread, if present, or prevent it altogether.

Kadakampally Surendran, the minister in-charge of the district, told reporters Sunday, "Kerala's capital is sitting on top of a volcano. It can burst any moment. We request people to stay at home."

Although there’s no data on the number of Malayalis who have tested positive so far, statistics show over 270 of them have succumbed to the virus since February in the six Gulf countries of UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman and Bahrain.