Chennai: Tamilnadu, one of the worst affected States by the Covid-19 pandemic in the country, today crossed the two lakh crosses mark. However, officials said the spread will be brought under control in a week’s time.
Continuing with its trend of witnessing a new high everyday, Tamilnadu on Friday posted a whopping 6,785 fresh Covid-19 cases. With this, the total number of coronavirus infections in the State has touched 1,99,749.
Out of the 6,785 cases reported in the last 24 hours, 1,299 were from Chennai alone. According to officials, 63,182 persons have been tested ono Friday, which is the highest so far.
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.
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.