District records slight dip in Covid caseload

Coimbatore: The district recorded a slight dip in Covid-19 cases, with only 996 people declared positive on Tuesday, taking the total number of cases past the 75,000-mark to 75,293.
Though 745 people were discharged, the number of active cases inched closer to the 7,000-mark at 6,948. The district also recorded one death due to the virus, taking the toll to 717. The victim was a 29-year-old man, who suffered from obesity, and died three days after testing positive at the Coimbatore Medical College Hospital due to bilateral bronchopneumonia and respiratory disease.
Over the last one week, the number of cases the city corporation accounted has grown from 59% on Monday to 60.97% on Tuesday. Within the civic body, the north zone, which consists of Ganapathy, Kavundampalayam and surrounding area, reported the highest number of cases at 166. However, the east zone continued to have the most number of active cases at 1,132. The civic body accounted for 628 of the 996 fresh cases. Of the people in home isolation, 1,056 are in the corporation limits. As on Tuesday, 1,791 of the 7,569 streets had active cases, of which 684 had more than three cases.
The larger containment zones included AMD Lenin Street in Vilankurichi that had 18 cases, Annai Velankanni Nagar that reported 10 cases, Ramani’s Mayuris apartment at Vellakinar that had 11 cases and Gandhipuram Fifth Street, which reported 10 cases.
The number of beds available in government hospitals increased to 729 with ESI Hospital having 59 free beds. Besides this, CMCH had 512 free beds and Pollachi GH had 93. The number of beds in private hospitals took a dip with only 829 free beds. Of this, Royal Care Hospital, One Care Hospital, Abhirami Hospital, N G Hospital, FIMS Hospital, Hindusthan Hospital, Kumaran Hospital, PSG Hospital, Kongunadu and KG Hospital full. GKNM, Ramakrishna and Karpagam Hospital had a few empty beds.
The alarming factor though was that among the 2,310 free beds, including those in Covid care centres, only 178 with oxygen or ventilator facilities for critical Covid-19 patients remained empty in the government sector. In the private sector, the number stood at 425.
With 10,328 people getting tested on Tuesday, the positivity rate stood at 9.6%. “Our positivity rate has never crossed 11%. We tested 9,000 to 12,000 samples a day. On Sunday, though we collected only 3,900 odd samples, we ran 10,000 samples,” city health officer S Raja said, speaking about the city seeing a positivity rate of 29.4% on a single day.