Thiruvananthapuram,  After bringing succour to thousands of students in Kerala last year with the launch of online classes, the state government's KITE Victers channel will now offer a live phone-in-cum-broadcast for Covid prevention as the state reels under a Covid surge, an official said on Thursday.

The state saw 41,953 people turn Covid positive from 1,63,321 samples tested in the past 24 hours on Wednesday and the TPR stood at 25.68 per cent and the total number of active positive cases in the state stood at 3,75,658, while 23,106 people was cured taking the total cured to 13,62,363.

When the national lockdown was in effect last year, Victers (Versatile ICT Enabled Resource for Students) channel had been extensively used for the broadcast of First Bell Digital Classes from June 2020, which ensured the continuance of education of over 43 lakh students in the state.

KITE CEO K. Anvar Sadath said with the statewide lockdown now declared, starting Saturday till next Sunday, the KITE Victers channel is now scheduling substantial time for programmes on Covid-19 preventive measures.

"It would telecast awareness videos related to Covid-19 prevention and secondly a live phone-in programme titled 'Athijeevanam' ('Survival') in association with the state Health Department. The callers to this programme would be able to interact with experts and doctors on respective areas on queries related to Covid-19 testing, quarantine, home isolation, treatment guidelines," he said.

Among the other topics, it would also deal with Covid vaccination, different vaccines, their protection, effectiveness and dosage details, and registration procedure for vaccination.

The toll free number for calling into the programme is 1800 425 9877.

The phone-in programme opened on Thursday and would be available from 2 p.m. to 3.30 p.m. with a repeat telecast from 8 p.m. to 9.30 p.m.. In addition to this, another Phone-in programme on mental wellbeing during Covid-19 times, exclusively for students and parents, in association with Women and Child Welfare Department, would also be telecast on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays from 11 a.m. to 12 noon.