Tamil Nadu on Saturday reported its highest-ever COVID-19 cases, recoveries and deaths on a single day. There were 6,988 fresh cases, 89 deaths and 7,758 recoveries.

With the recoveries exceeding the new cases, the number of active cases came down from 53,132 on Friday to 52,273.

The State crossed the 6,000-mark for the third consecutive day, with 22 of the 36 districts reporting more than 100 cases. Of them, 13 had more than 200 cases.

This coincided with the State increasing its testing further, with more than 60,000 persons getting tested every day for the past three days.

The Chennai region topped the list, with Chennai reporting 1,329 cases, followed by Chengalpattu-449, Kancheepuram-442, and Tiruvallur-385. These were followed by the southern districts of Virudhunagar, Thoothukudi and Madurai with 376, 317, and 301 cases respectively. Coimbatore, which witnessed more cases in the past couple of weeks, reported 270 fresh cases. The other districts that reported more than 200 cases were Kanniyakumari, Ranipet, Theni, Tirunelveli and Vellore.

The majority of the recoveries were reported from Chennai-1,131, Madurai-946, Tiruvallur-682 and Chengalpattu-563.

The State’s daily toll crossed the 80-mark for the third consecutive day. Of the 89 deaths reported on Saturday, 60 were aged 60 and above. The oldest was a 96-year-old man from Coimbatore who was brought dead to the Coimbatore Medical College Hospital on Thursday night. His COVID-19 test result came in positive on Friday.

The youngest was an 18-year-old from Thoothukudi district, who had neuromyelitis optica and was on immunosuppressants, according to the bulletin issued by the Health and Family Welfare Department. She tested positive on July 19 and was admitted to the Thoothukudi Medical College Hospital on July 23. She died on the same day.

Among the fatalities, 84 had co-morbidities, the bulletin said. A total of 23 deaths happened at private hospitals and the remaining 67 in government facilities.

The State added one more private laboratory to its testing infrastructure on Saturday, taking the total number of laboratories capable of performing RT-PCR tests to 115. Three more deaths took the Union Territory’s COVID-19 fatalities to 38 on Saturday. The UT also reported 139 new admissions during the last 24 hours.

Situation in Puducherry

The death of two patients in Puducherry and one in Yanam took the death toll to 38 in the Union Territory.

The case tally has gone up to 2,654, and 1,055 patients are undergoing treatment in the four regions of the U.T. As many as 1,561 patients have been discharged.