Puducherry’s COVID-19 tally crossed the 19,000-mark on Friday with the detection of 504 new cases, even as 12 more deaths raised the toll to 365.

All deaths occurred in Puducherry, and the patients belonged to the 40-88 age group. The toll in the capital alone is now 311, followed by Yanam (34) and Karaikal (20). “Health teams have been told to focus on facilitating early hospitalisation of sick patients as late reporting is an important cause for mortality,” Health Minister Malladi Krishna Rao said.

New cases were detected from testing 2,823 samples. The Puducherry region accounted for 438 cases followed by Karaikal (35), Yanam (27) and Mahe (four). A total of 394 patients were discharged in 24 hours.

The fatality rate was 1.92%, and recovery rate 72.44% in the Union Territory. The figures for Puducherry so far are: 365 deaths, 4,878 active cases, 19,026 cases and 13,783 patients discharged.

As many as 92,904 samples were tested so far, of which 71,196 turned out negative.