Thiruvananthapuram, Jan 23 (PTI) Kerala continued to record a daily tally of over 45,000 cases for the second day in a row on Sunday taking the total number of affected people in the state to 56,20,151. In a bulletin issued late on Sunday, the health department said 45,449 new positive cases were detected in Kerala. On Saturday, the state had recorded 45,136 new cases while on Thursday, Kerala had registered 46,387 cases, the highest single-day spike since the outbreak of the pandemic in 2020. The health department said 1,01,252 samples were tested in the last 24 hours and there were 2,64,638 active cases in the state. "Currently, only 3.5 per cent of the active COVID-19 patients are admitted to hospitals," the department said in the release. Kerala registered 77 fatalities, taking the death toll to 51,816. Among the latest fatalities, 38 were recorded over the last few days while 39 were designated as COVID-19 deaths after receiving appeals based on the new guidelines of the Centre and the directions of the Supreme Court. Ernakulam district reported 11,091 new cases, the highest in the state, followed by Thiruvananthapuram with 8,980 cases and Kozhikode with 5,581 cases. Meanwhile, 27,961 people recuperated from the disease on Sunday taking the total recoveries in the state to 53,25,932. There are 4,17,764 people under observation in the state out of which 8,883 are in isolation wards of various hospitals. The health department also informed that 100 per cent of the targeted population in the state (2,67,53,867) has been administered with the first dose of vaccine while 83 per cent (2,22,68,609) received both the doses of the vaccine. PTI RRT RRT HDA HDA