Tamil Nadu surpasses 1 lakh Covid-19 cases; sees 40,000 new cases in last 10 days
Mobile coronavirus clinic in Chennai
Tamil Nadu has become the second state (after Maharashtra) in India to record over 1lakh corona virus cases. The southern Indian state has crossed this grim number at a time when the capital city Chennai and three adjoining districts with high population density are under an intense lockdown since June 19th. The lockdown is in place till July 5th, after which partial normalcy would resume with offices and standalone shops allowed to function with limited strength.
Friday’s health bulletin issued by the state government said that Tamil Nadu had recorded 4329 new cases, taking the total count to 1, 02,721. The state has tested 35,028 samples over the last 24 hours and a total of 12, 70,720 samples till date. 2357 persons were discharged from hospitals over the last 24 hours and 58,378 persons were discharged in total. The state also recorded 64 deaths, thus taking the total count to 1385. Chennai alone has reported 2082 of Friday’s 4329 new cases.
It was on June 22nd that Tamil Nadu has surpassed 60,000 cases and in about 10 days the state has added 40,000 new cases to breach the 1 lakh mark. It was on June 3rd that Tamil Nadu’s total case count had breached the 25,000 mark. This goes on to indicate the rapid spike in cases in the month of June and the same trend continuing, with more daily cases.
Also read: Tamil Nadu breaches 60,000 Covid-19 cases; sees over 35,000 new cases in last 19 days
When India entered its ‘Unlock’ phase since the start of June with gradual ease of restrictions, by mid-June Tamil Nadu government had announced a decision to go in for an intense lockdown in Chennai and few other districts.
It is evident from the daily state government bulletin that the authorities in Tamil Nadu have ramped up testing, tracing and isolation efforts during the lockdown. Last week, Tamil Nadu was the first state in India to have performed over 1 million tests. In recent weeks, Tamil Nadu has been consistently testing over 25,000 samples every day. On many days the state had also recorded above 30,000 tests.
For perspective, Tamil Nadu had barely performed a total of 3000 tests as on April 1st. However, in the following months testing was immensely ramped up, thus enabling the state to reach the 1 million mark. In terms of Covid-19 testing facilities, from merely 17 labs at the start of April, there has been a five-fold increase and currently, 91 labs are functional. As per the data from the State health bulletins, 48 of these testing labs are state government facilities while 43 of them are private ones.
Also read: How Tamil Nadu became the first state in India to test over 1 million Covid-19 samples
This high rate of testing has also revealed a good number of cases with the state seeing over 3000 daily cases for over a week and over 4000 daily cases on Thursday and Friday. Such a high rate of testing was made possible due to the manner in which the state government mobilized resources to establish more government testing labs and urged the private sector to also pitch in.
Tamil Nadu’s recovery rate has been on par with the national average, with over 57% of patients having recovered. In terms of mortality rate, the state has seen around 1.3% of patients losing their battle to the deadly pandemic.
A majority of the state’s cases(over 60%) are from the capital city Chennai and its three adjoining districts of Kanchipuram, Tiruvallur and Chengalpattu. On Thursday and Friday, the state witnessed a usual trend of the total cases of all other districts being higher than Chennai’s case count.
Withe the intense lockdown in Chennai and adjoining districts, besides a few southern districts to be relaxed from July 6th, the challenge for the authorities is only set to get bigger. It has been observed in the past as well that lockdowns can only delay the inevitable spike in cases and buy time for the health infrastructure to be scaled up. Authorities have always emphasized on public cooperation and the importance of mask-wearing, frequent hand-washing and personal hygiene practices, including social distancing.
