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The southern Indian state of Kerala accounts for more than half of the country's new Covid-19 infections. The BBC's Soutik Biswas and Vikas Pandey report on why cases continue to rise in the state, months after the waning of the deadly second wave.
In January 2020, Kerala reported India's first Covid-19 case in a medical student who returned from Wuhan, in China, where the pandemic began.
The number of cases rose steadily and it became a hotspot. By March, however, half a dozen states were reporting more cases than the picturesque southern state.
Sticking faithfully to the contagion control playbook of test, trace and isolate and involving grassroots networks, Kerala brought down its case count drastically. There were breathless stories about the state flattening the curve. The first wave was protracted, but Kerala managed to control the spread of infection. The official death count remained low.
Also, Kerala has fully vaccinated more than 20% of its eligible population and 52% - including 70% of people over 45 years - have received a single jab, much higher than the national average.
So the state appears to be testing widely, reporting cases honestly, vaccinating quickly and ensuring that hospitals are not overwhelmed. Future waves of infection will not be "as severe as the second wave, given the pace at which Kerala is vaccinating its population", reckons Dr Rijo M John, a health economist.
Yet, epidemiologists worry that Kerala's apparent success does not tell us the whole story.
For one, a large number of people remain susceptible to the virus. "This is likely to be driving the pandemic in the state now," says Prof Gautam Menon, a disease modelling expert.
There is also risk in "letting people get infected, even while preventing deaths", says virologist Dr Shahid Jameel.
And that risk is of long Covid - long-term problems after recovering from the original infection - which afflicts up to a third of those infected, including asymptomatic patients.
Prof Menon says a prolonged pandemic could mean the possibility of more mutations of the virus, leading to the emergence of new and dangerous variants which could spread the disease to the unvaccinated and uninfected people. "This is a time for caution. Kerala's main focus should be to bring down case numbers."
Many say Kerala needs to be wiser and more forceful while enforcing rolling lockdowns - the state has allowed festivals to go ahead, leading to mass gatherings and risks of increased infections. Virologists say Kerala also requires a more granular data on targeted testing and increased genome sequencing to find out where the infections are rising the most and to track new variants.