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Tamil Nadu records highest single day Covid 19 spike with 3645 cases, tally nears 75k mark

Tamil Nadu has reinstated lockdown conditions in a few districts of the state including Chennai. The cases have seen a sharp rise in the last two days.

Updated on: Jun 26, 2020, 19:07:04 IST
Hindustan Times, New Delhi | By
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Tamil Nadu on Friday reported the highest single day spike with 3,645 new Covid 19 cases taking the state’s total to 74,622 cases including 46 deaths reported over the last 24 hours, according to the data released by the state health department. The southern state has currently 32,305 active cases of Covid-19 and has recorded a total of 957 fatalities. State capital of Chennai is the worst affected city with close to 50,000 coronavirus infections.

A health worker collects a girl’s sample in Chennai for COVID-19 test (PTI Photo)
A health worker collects a girl’s sample in Chennai for COVID-19 test (PTI Photo)

A total of 3,509 persons had tested positive for the virus on Thursday—the previous record for highest single day spike and the first instance of daily cases crossing the three-thousand mark. 45 coronavirus patients were recorded to have died in the state on Thursday, according to PTI.

The state has tested more than 10 lakh samples so far and the results indicate that close to 4,000 children under 12 years of age are infected in the state.

Chennai Corporation Commissioner G Prakash said that detection of people with flu- like symptoms had increased manifold during the daily door-to-door survey after the lockdown came into effect a week ago.

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He said that during the pre-lockdown times, about 600-700 symptomatic cases used to be recorded every day but now, it has crossed the 3,000 mark for a day,

“Yesterday, 3,217 people were found with symptoms in the door-to-door surveys,” Prakash said.

Tamil Nadu has announced a fresh lockdown from June 19 to June 30 in Chennai and parts of Chengalpet, Kancheepuram, and Tiruvallur districts. Most relaxations have been withdrawn and only shops and retail outlets for essentials are permitted to operate from 6 am till 2 pm.

The city corporation has distributed pulse oximeters among the symptomatic cases for self monitoring of blood oxygen levels, which sometimes drop dangerously without prior warning in patients infected by the disease.

Doctors are visiting people identified with symptoms to determine who should be sent for a confirmatory RT-PCR test for coronavirus,” Prakash was quoted as saying by PTI.

Chennai has close to 12,000 operationalised beds, meaning those with availability of doctors and other personnel, in the Covid Care Centres. 4,350 of such beds are occupied and work is in progress to make additional beds including 5,000 at a Tamil Nadu Housing Board apartment complex and 1,500 at the Anna University premises, available.

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The Corporation has kept 17,500 beds ready in 54 Covic Care Centres in the city which includes educational institutions and about 12,000 of these are serviced by health care professionals.

Chennai along with nine other major cities including Delhi, Thane, Mumbai, Palghar, Pune, Hyderabad, Ranga Reddy, Ahmedabad and Faridabad are reported to have 54.47 per cent of India’s total cases between June 19 and June 25, according to a health ministry official.

The number of Covid-19 cases in India has increased by a record 17,296 in 24 hours on Friday, pushing the total tally to 4,90,401.

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