Chennai: With Tamilnadu now crossing one lakh Covid-19 cases, overtaking China and many other countries in the world, people are worried about the ‘grim situation’ and express fear.
However, officials still maintain community spread is yet to happen in the State and the high numbers are only due to increased tests.
“From over 3,000 new infections a day, Tamilnadu is now witnessing more than 4,000 cases for the past two days. And, the one-lakh mark was crossed yesterday. If the trend goes like this, we don’t know what to do,” says Ramakrishnan of Saidapet.
Describing the situation as grim, Sivakumar of Thoraipakkam says, “the infection has spread to other parts of Tamilnadu as well. I really fear how are we going to come out of this.”
However, Health department officials said the people should not get scared of the high caseload as it is a result of Tamilnadu’s strategy of aggressive and increased testing and that the focus is to reduce fatalities.
“Tamilnadu has a case fatality rate of 1.3 per cent, which is low when compared to the national average of 2.9 per cent,” according to an official. Since 20 June, there has been a spike in testing, with over 30,000 people tested everyday on average.
Experts said the high numbers can also be attributed to the movement of people across the State post Unlock 1 which started on 8 June.