Thiruvananthapuram, Jan 19 : The Kerala Health Department, headed by Minister K.K. Shailaja, is sceptical as the number of Covid patients has been on the rise everyday and a study conducted by it says that the cases were expected to come down to 1,000 per day only by July. Kerala has the highest number of Covid positive cases per day followed by Maharashtra. While the state had 3,346 positive cases on Monday, Maharashtra had 3,081 cases. The number of positive cases per day in other states have come down below thousand since the past few weeks. Karnataka had registered 745, West Bengal 589 and Tamil Nadu 589 per day once. Death figures per day, show the state is second only to Maharashtra. As the number of recoveries were more than positive cases per day, the health department is of the opinion that the medication and precautions were giving results. Shailaja said that the local body polls and the festivals were the reason for the increase in cases in the state and called upon the people not to let their guards down. "The vaccination drive is a positive sign but it does not mean that we can relax. We have to be on guard and all the security measures we are adopting have to continue," she told the media. Health experts are of the opinion that sticking on to Antigen tests and the population density are the main reasons for the rising Covid cases in the state. Antigen tests generally don't give proper results. Better results are generally obtained by RTPCR tests which other states were using. However, Rajeev Sadanandan IAS, Chief Minister's Covid Advisor told the media: "No need to worry regarding the spike in cases. We are the only state where the number of deaths are not increasing." /IANS