Chennai: For the first time, Tamilnadu on Thursday witnessed its highest single-day spike in new Covid-19 cases, pushing tally beyond 1.9 lakh.
With record 6,472 more people confirming positive for coronavirus in the last 24 hours, the total number of cases in Tamilnadu has reached 1,92,964, according to the State Health department.
With these figures raising concerns among the general public, Health officials said this was because of the new strategy of the government to do pooled testing. ‘The testings have increased, so the cases too are going high. The spread will be controlled in a week’s time. Wait and watch,’ said an official.
With the state permitting pooled testing (RT-PCR) in 21 districts, the number of people tested increased to 60,375 on Thursday compared to 58,475 on Wednesday and 50,055 on Tuesday, officials said.
Tamilnadu government has started pool testing for Covid-19 diagnosis in areas with 2-5 per cent positivity rate.
Pool testing is a method of testing samples of up to five individuals as one (pool). If the pool tests negative, all the samples in the pool are considered negative.
As pr the guidelines of ICMR, if the sample pool tests positive, all samples in the pool must be tested separately by RT-PCR. Areas with more than 5 per cent positivity, health workers who were in direct contact with patients and known contacts of patients are not to be tested in this method.
It was earlier alleged that there was a delay of up to three days in getting the results and in some cases they had to wait nearly five days. On the other hand, officials blamed overload of samples.