New Delhi, April 18 : The on Health Ministry on Monday urged Kerala to regularly update the data of daily Covid-19 cases. In a letter addressed to Kerala Principal Secretary Rajan Khobragade regarding intensive monitoring at the state and district level, Joint on Health Secretary Lav Agarwal asked the southern state to take suitable steps to monitor Covid-19 and update the concerned data timely. Agarwal highlighted in the letter that the Kerala government had reported its state-level Covid-19 data after a gap of 5 days since April 13. The on Ministry also said that the delayed reporting of data by Kerala has impacted the country’s key indicators on the Covid-19 national trajectory. “This has impacted and skewed the status of India’s key monitoring indicators like cases, deaths and positivity,” Agarwal wrote in the letter. Further, he also said that daily and diligent reporting of data is critical to arrive at a meaningful understanding of pandemic at the districts, state and national levels and ensure that any anomalies, surges or emerging trends can be captured promptly. The issue has been raised by the Central ministry on a day when India reported a 90 per cent increase in new cases in the last 24 hours, while a rise of 165 per cent in positivity was recorded in a single day. ASH RJ