Covid-19 in Tamil Nadu: Doubling rate dips from 173 to 48 days in three weeks

CHENNAI: Tamil Nadu added 98 deaths and 16,665 new cases of Covid-19 on Wednesday, when active cases touched 1,10,308. At the end of the day after discharging 15,114 cases, the cumulative case tally was revised to 11,30,167 (11.3 lakh) and death toll reached 13,826.
In the past one week, there have been 568 deaths due to the viral infection. During this time between April 22 and April 28, the state has added 1.05 lakh new cases. The sum of deaths between April 1 and 7 was 102, when the state added 13,548 new cases. The doubling period for the viral infection came down from 173 days on April 7 to 48 days on Wednesday. This means if the growth of infection does not slow down, we will be adding another 11.3 lakh Covid-19 cases in just seven weeks.
Infections in hotspot Chennai continued to increase as 4,764 tested positive in the past 24 hours that ended on Wednesday afternoon. Despite 4,647 discharges, active cases in the city increased to 31,295 compared to 31,136 on Tuesday. The sum of new cases in the first week of April was 9,002 compared to 29,755 between April 22 and April 28. The sum of deaths in a week increased from 43 to 210. The district reported 32 deaths – also the highest in TN – on Wednesday.
After Chennai, Chengalpet reported 1,219 new cases and eight deaths. With 751 cases in Tiruvallur and 443 cases in Kancheepuram, the Chennai region together registered 7,177 new cases and 54 deaths. The region had 47,970 active cases. The other northern districts meanwhile reported 1,540 new cases and 15 deaths.
Coimbatore reported 963 new cases and two deaths, and together the eight districts in the region had 3,346 new cases and 15 deaths. The 10 districts in the south added 3,082 new cases and nine deaths. Trichy (480) had the highest number of cases in the central zone, where there were 1,518 new cases and five deaths.
On Wednesday, 1,25,004 people underwent RTPCR tests. So far, 2.23 crore samples have been tested in the state.