485 cases take tally past 23K-mark

Coimbatore: Covid-19 tally zoomed past the 23,000-mark in the district on Tuesday, when it recorded 485 new cases, even as 437 patients were discharged from treatment facilities. The district has seen a total of 23,147 Covid-19 cases so far and of them 3,593 are active cases.
At least 19,193 patients have recovered from Covid-19 in the district, where the recovery rate stands at 82.9%.
The toll, meanwhile, touched 361 with the state including four deaths that occurred in the district on Monday in the bulletin. The deceased were all women, who had hypertension and diabetes. Two of the deceased were in their 60s and the remaining in their 50s.
The new cases were spread across the district. At least 12 people were tested positive for the virus from Chinnavedampatti, eight from Vasanth Nagar at Singanallur, 18 from Ramanathapuram, seven from Vadavalli, eight from a car showroom at PN Palayam, 14 from Vellakinar, 13 from Mettupalayam, seven from Selvapuram and 14 from Ganapathy.
District collector K Rajamani, meanwhile, convened a meeting with private laboratories on the day, requesting them to start testing government samples again. When the Covid-19 testing labs at the Coimbatore Medical College and Hospital and the ESI Hospital began getting overloaded, the government had roped in private labs to test the samples. However, when they did not receive reimbursements, the private labs had threatened to stop testing government samples.
An official, who didn’t want to be named, said, “However, they have been reassured that payments will be released in a day or two. The collector and city corporation commissioner have asked the labs to mention their capacity and it seems to come around 8,000 samples a day.”
The private laboratories have also been asked to communicate negative results to patients via SMS or email immediately as that would reduce their anxiety levels. Positive results have to be communicated to the government and the patients as well.
Also, pulse oximeters have been made compulsory in all labs, which have been asked to check all people, and if a person’s oxygen saturation is low, that person would be directly admitted in hospitals without waiting for their real-time reverse transcription–polymerase chain reaction test result.