Chennai: With the number of people affected by coronavirus increasing each passing day, the Tamilnadu government has intensified its actions to curb the spread of the pandemic.
Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami today chaired a video conference meeting with all the District Collectors from the Secretariat in Chennai.
Sources said discussions were held about the present situation of prevention of coronavirus and the steps needed to be taken in the future. It is said Palaniswami urged the district administrations to iniitate strong measures to further check the spread of the disease.
Deputy Chief Minister O Panneerselvam, Ministers and top officials were part of today’s meeting. Palaniswami has been holding regular meetings with top officials ever since the Covid-19 outbreak in the State.
Following an alarming spike in number of coronavirus cases, the Tamilnadu police have tightened their grip by enforcing severe restrictions.
In the past 12 days, police have been trying to ensure that the rules are not violated and people remain indoors until the coronavirus graph curve flattens. Yesterday, the number of Coronavirus positive cases stood at 571. Police said they have been taking people to task for roaming the city unnecessarily. Police have arrested 90,918 persons for stepping out of the house for non-essential purposes and 69,589 vehicles were seized.
As many as 91,782 violations were recorded across the State, however, police have filed only 82,752 FIRs.
Rs 24,60,194 was collected as fines from violators of Section 144 till this morning.
On Sunday, even as the toll in coronavirus disease rose to five with two more deaths, the number of cases also increased significantly with 86 more testing positive, taking Tamilnadu’s tally to 571.
Stating that the virus was only in Stage-2 in Tamilnadu, Health Secretary Beela Rajesh told reporters here that of the 86 fresh cases, 85 of them attended the last month’s Tablighi Jamaat conference in Delhi, while one has a history of travelling to Dubai.With this the number of positive cases linked to the Delhi meet rose to 522 from 437.
With a whopping 446 cases reported in the State in the last five days alone, Tamilnadu is second on India’s COVID-19 chart behind Maharashtra, where it crossed 600 cases.
Meanwhile, two patients, who tested positive, died at the Government Stanley Medical College and Hospital here, taking the toll to five.
While one of them was a 71-year-old male from Ramanathapuram, who was admitted to the hospital on April 2 at 09.45 am and died within two hours at 11.45 am, the other was a 60-year-old man, a resident of Washermenpet in the city, who was admitted on April one and died at 01.45 am on Sunday.
The blood samples and throat swabs of the 71-year-old man, which were sent for laboratory tests, reported positive today, while the Chennai victim had already tested positive and succumbed early this morning, taking the number of Covid-19 deaths in the State to five.