Chennai: One more person died of corona taking the toll to 24, while 64 more people tested positive on Sunday as the number of Covid cases in Tamilnadu went up to 1,885.
A bullet in issued by the Health and Family Welfare department here said a 42-year-old man admitted at a private hospital died due to Covid-19 infection at 1630 hrs last evening, taking the toll to 24 in the State–a mortality rate of about 1.2 per cent.
Of the 64 fresh cases (39 men and 25 women), Chennai continued to register a maximum of 28 cases, followed by Madurai (15), Virudhunagar (seven), Villuppuram and Namakkal (four each), Tiruppur (2), Tiruvallur, Ramanathapuram, Kallakurichi and Salem (one each).
Of the total 1,885 cases, 1,279 were men and 606 were women. This included 110 in 0-12 age group (59 men/51 women), 1,554 in 13-60 age group (1062/492) and 221 above 60 years of age (157/64).
A total number of 60 people, who have tested positive, were on Sunday discharged, as the number of cured patients increased to 1020, taking the recovery rate to more than 52 per cent. In other words, the number of discharged persons is higher than that of those who are now currently getting treatment for the pandemic.
This included 13 in Chengalpattu 12 in Tiruvarur, 10 in Thanjavur, nine in Chennai, eight in Madurai and two in Kanniyakumari. Six others, who underwent treatment in private hospitals were also discharged today, taking the
numbers to 60.
Chennai continued to remain on the top of the chart with 523 cases, followed by Coimbatore (141), Tiruppur (112), Dindigul (80), Madurai (75), Erode (70), Tirunelveli (63), Namakkal (59), Chengalpattu (58), Thanjavur (55), Tiruvallur (53) and Trichy (51). Till date 87,159 passengers have completed 28 days follow-up.
As on date 1,20,362 were under home quarantine for 28 days and 1,838 people were under hospital isolation. A total of 29,056 patients were under active quarantine and 26 under Government Quarantine.
Till date 87,605 samples, including 7,495 today, have been taken and sent for testing, of which 1,885 tested positive, 77,133 tested negative, while testing of 568 samples were under process.
Of this, 8,019 samples were repeat samples of same persons. The total number of persons tested till date was 79,586 which included 6,621 on Sunday.
At present the State has 41 testing centres–30 in government (the highest in the country) and 11 in private hospitals.
Adding strength
As per an order by Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami, free zinc and multi-vitamin tablets will be provided from today to government officials who are on Covid-19 field duty to boost their immunity. According to officials, masks, personal protective equipment are also to be given to officials of revenue, health, police and others who are on Covid-19 field duty. In order to improve their immunity, zinc and multi-vitamin tablets will be provided free of cost for 10 days from Monday onwards, they added.
Heightened vigil
The State capital, which has all along been leading the red zone, added 28 cases on Sunday including a nine-year old boy and the aggregate number here stood at 523 crossing the 500 mark. On Saturday, Chennai district had 495 virus cases. With Chennai crossing the 500-mark, the Corporation has intensified efforts and more vigil is being maintained at containment zones. ‘We are hopeful that the number of inefections would come down by the end of this week,’ said an official.
Iron hand
The Tamilnadu government has passed an ordinance whereby those who block the decent burial/cremation of bodies of persons who had died due to notified diseases will be punished under Tamilnadu Public Health Act.
Such punishable offence would attract a fine, jail term of minimum one year and a maximum of three years. The ordinance has been passed after people started blocking burial/cremation of Covid-19 patients fearing spread of coronavirus in their locality.