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Tamil Nadu’s Covid-19 cases shoot up by over 8k, highest single-day spike this year
On Friday, Tamil Nadu’s chief secretary Rajeev Ranjan held a meeting with health officials to discuss control measures.
Covid-19 cases have been steadily rising in Tamil Nadu and it touched 8,449 cases on Friday - the highest the state has recorded this year, official data shows. Of this, the highest number of cases come from the capital city Chennai, 2636, and adjoining districts of Chengalpattu (795), Thiruvallur (453) and Kancheepuram (303). Amongst the 37 districts, Coimbatore reported the third-highest number of cases with 583 fresh cases.
On Friday, Tamil Nadu’s chief secretary Rajeev Ranjan held a meeting with health officials to discuss control measures.
“The numbers seem higher than what we saw during a peak last year. Cases are increasing in Chennai in the past three days in the second wave where we have had more than 2,000 new cases every day,” said Greater Chennai Corporation commissioner G Prakash. “Last June we were touched testing 10,000 samples in a day. Now we are testing close to 20,000 samples in a day. We are aiming to increase it to 25,000 samples,” he said.
The state is also conducting a high number of RT-PCR tests. On Friday, 95,561 people were tested and their samples were sent to 263 labs across the state. The average positivity rate across the state has been 4.56%. As many as 33 people succumbed to the infection on Friday taking the total toll to 13,032. A total of 4,920 people were discharged.
Last year, during the first wave, Tamil Nadu for weeks reported the second-highest caseload in the country. The state managed to bring it down significantly and also reduced its mortality rate.
By March 24, 1,636 cases were reported this year in the state. The infections began to rise as Tamil Nadu was at the peak of political activity ahead of the assembly elections which was held on April 6. On polling day, 3,645 fresh cases were reported.
At political rallies across the state, though top leaders were masked or in their campaign vehicles, thousands gathered on the ground without wearing masks and with no social distancing. “We don’t know what percentage of cases are attributed to specific sources,” said Prabhdeep Kaur, deputy director, National Institute of Epidemiology. “We need to do epidemiological investigation on the source of infections and clusters to better understand how the disease has spread. We assume that any kind of gathering is a superspreader in general from what we know of the virus so far but it isn’t substantiated by data,” he added.
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After elections were over, the state came out with a slew of restrictions to prevent people from gathering in large numbers in public places. But the state health department has clarified that there will not be any lockdown.
In Chennai, the civic body has begun micro containment of streets where more than three cases are reported. Fever camps which were crucial in identifying Covid-19 symptoms and door-to-door surveillance are also being carried out in neighbourhoods.
The state’s health infrastructure is currently not overwhelmed. As of April 12, Tamil Nadu had 52,619 beds of which more than 32,000 were equipped with oxygen support. Bed occupancy is less than 10% in the state and 20% in Chennai, said health secretary J Radhakrishnan. The total number of patients to test positive till date in Tamil Nadu is 971,384.
