Thiruvananthapuram, Aug 7 : Ever since Kerala became the hotspot of Covid in the country by recording as high as 50 per cent of the total daily cases in the country, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan prefers to give out the daily Covid statistics in the form of a statement and is not holding press conferences. And on Saturday, there is no respite in the spread of Covid in Kerala as 20,367 people turned positive after 1,52,521 samples were tested in the past 24 hours, said Vijayan's statement. The day's test positivity rate (TPR) is 13.35 per cent and the active cases rose to 1,78,166 after 20,265 turned negative. A total of 139 Covid deaths were reported taking the total death toll to 17,654 in the state. Incidentally Vijayan, of late has not met the media for a while now, unlike in the past when he used to appear live on TV channels around 5 p.m. and for almost 50 minutes used to not only give out Covid figures but would concentrate on a particular topic everyday on how to tackle Covid and at times used to remind on how Kerala has shown to the world how it has tackled Covid. And after his long press conferences, he used to allocate around 10 minutes for questions and would end the press interaction at times abruptly stating that the time is up and he used to leave in a jiffy. Even in the ongoing assembly session, even the Congress led opposition pointed out that when they raise an adjournment motion to the Chief Minister about Covid, it's the Health Minister who replies. /IANS