Tamil Nadu Covid-19 lockdown news live: State's core Covid panel may meet today

Youngsters in the city seem to be showing more symptoms during the second wave of Covid-19, but Greater Chennai Corporation data shows there is still high incidence among elders who remain the most vulnerable.

Tamil Nadu’s active case count touched the 80,000-mark on Wednesday when the state added 11,681 fresh infections and 53 deaths. About 7,071 people were discharged on Wednesday leaving 84,361 people still under treatment. The case tally in the state touched 10.25 lakh and the toll tally reached 13252.

The state on Wednesday vaccinated 55,830 people even as several vaccine centres, including ones in Chennai, turned people away citing inadequate stock. This uncertainty has led beneficiaries to ask the government to display vaccine availability on the state webpage.

As Puducherry continued to report more than 600 new Covid cases on Wednesday, the administration decided to impose a lockdown from Friday night till Monday morning (April 26) in a bid to curb the spread of the viral infection.

Five people, including the parents of a six-year-old girl, were arrested in Erode district on Wednesday on charges of planning to kill their daughter in a child sacrifice bid. The girl’s maternal grandmother, who lodged a complaint with the police against her daughter and son-in-law, said the child’s parents and three others had tortured the child and his 15-year-old brother for a long time.

Poets are known to be hungry to do something for the community, but this techie-turned-bard from Trichy has found his true calling in feeding those crying of hunger. Meet Kavin Kumar, a 24-year-old project engineer with Wipro in Chennai, who dabbled with Tamil poetry as a pastime and soon turned his passion into service to feed 2,000 people with the Rs 70,000 he earned by selling poems online through his Instagram page ‘Malalai Kavingan’ in a year.

A day after the Delhi HC said that Tamil Nadu topped the list of states on vaccine wastage, opposition parties, including the DMK and the AMMK, faulted the state government for the wastage. According to agency reports quoting an RTI reply by the Centre, Tamil Nadu reported vaccine wastage at 12.10%, followed by Haryana (9.74%), Punjab (8.12%), Manipur (7.80%) and Telangana (7.55%).

DMK president M K Stalin on Wednesday expressed concern over the "differential pricing" for Covishield vaccines to be procured by the Centre and the states, calling it 'discriminatory' and urged the union government to ensure common prices for all. (PTI)

Tamil Nadu continued to witness a spike in Covid-19 infections adding 11,681 new cases on Wednesday, pushing the caseload to 10,25,059, while 53 deaths took the toll to 13,258, the health department said. The state for the first time breached the grim 10,000 mark on Sunday by adding 10,723 new infections while on Monday it was 10,941 new cases and 10,986 on Tuesday.

The Tamil Nadu government on Wednesday said it would take up with the Centre, diversion of about 45 metric tonnes of medical oxygen from a city plant to Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, while asserting that the state had adequate stocks of oxygen. (PTI)

The corporation’s fiat mandating every Covid-19 positive patient, especially those above 45, to get a home quarantine certificate from a private or government service doctor is causing immese trouble to citizens. There is fear among many of exposure to non-Covid patients at private hospitals. Several residents questioned the need to visit a doctor even if they are asymptomatic. Three such incidents were reported to TOI on Tuesday alone, where youngsters without any symptoms were forced to get a home quarantine certificate.

A 57-year-old patient, who was being treated for Covid-19, was found hanging at a private hospital in Kelambakkam on Monday night. Police said Rangan from Hasthinapuram in Chrompet was undergoing treatment at the hospital’s corona Ward since April 16.

75 per cent of the beds in Chennai have been occupied, according to the state health department's report as the Covid cases continue to mount. Tamil Nadu has 79,808 cases with Chennai alone accounting for 28,005 cases on Tuesday evening.

Southern Railway will not operate suburban trains in Chennai after 10pm and run only bare minimum services on Sundays because of the night curfew and the Sunday lockdown announced by the Tamil Nadu government to curb the spread of Covid-19. The first service will begin after 4am. Read more

Amid the rise in Covid-19 cases across the country, the Union Territory of Puducherry on Wednesday decided to impose lockdown till April 26. Read more

Municipal Administration and Water Supply secretary Harmander Singh said on Tuesday that there is a pressing need to increase the number of tests for Covid-19 to 25,000 per day from the existing12,000 to16,000 a day. Chairing a meeting of field support workers from 15 zones of Greater Chennai Corporation here on Tuesday, he emphasised on making about 12,000 beds available at 15 Covid care centres within the corporation limits for the benefit of patients who have recently tested positive for the viral infection.

The Union territory reported 638 cases on Tuesday, pushing up the total active cases to 5,073. In the last 10 days, Puducherry has logged 5,237 fresh Covid-19 cases and 28 deaths due to the infection.

Anna Nagar, Teynampet and Kodambakkam, zones 8, 9 and 10 of the corporation and constituting the core areas, now account for 30% of the city’s active cases. These zones also constitute 36% of the streets with more than three recorded cases each and where the civic body has restricted movement. Corporation data shows that 1,996 streets have more than three cases each and 118 of them have more than 10 cases each.