Tamil Nadu Covid lockdown news live: Chennai corporation to hire final year MBBS students

The pandemic has been hard on children, more so those with special needs. For more than a year now, many children with developmental delays, cerebral palsy, and muscular dystrophy have been confined to their homes, unable to get in-person therapy essential to help them acquire physical, social and cognitive skills. Without this support, parents say, many such children have regressed in terms of life skills. “Until a year ago, my son would stand up, sit, walk and carry out all basic tasks by himself, but now he’s completely dependent on me. He keeps lying on his bed, and we have to carry him to do everything,” said T Maheshwari, a school teacher whose five-year-old has cerebral palsy and is also autistic. Maheshwari’s son used to attend a special school, which closed during the pandemic. Their physiotherapist too stopped coming home, and since then the child’s condition has worsened.

As the country reels under the second wave of Covid-19 infection, a rare fungal infection threatens patients who have recovered from the viral infection, especially those who are diabetic and received oxygen or steroids support. Specialists at Aravind Eye Hospital in Puducherry said they have so far encountered at least a dozen of patients, who recovered from Covid-19 infection, but contracted the black fungus infection (mucormycosis), in the last three or four weeks. "We have seen about a dozen patients from Puducherry and Karaikal and Cuddalore, Thanjavur and Nagapattinam districts in Tamil Nadu with black fungus infection. The patients came to us after the infection spread from their sinus to the eye orbit affecting their vision. Five of them lost vision in one of their eyes due to the infection. We have referred them to multi-speciality hospitals in Chennai and Jipmer that has ENT and neuro team support to manage, treat and cure the infection," said AEH chief medical officer Dr R Venkatesh.

The city police, who over the past four days had preferred persuasion to handle lockdown violators, on Friday began getting tough, impounding vehicles of those out on the roads for non-essential purposes. Following instructions from city commissioner Shankar Jiwal, drones will be used in each of the 12 police districts headed by a deputy commissioner to monitor people roaming unnecessarily on streets and roads. On Friday alone, the law and order wing and the traffic police registered 2,079 cases for violating the curfew. They impounded 1,727 vehicles including twowheelers, autorickshaws and cars and slapped 1,346 cases against people for not wearing face masks, About 83 cases were registered against people for failing to maintain social distancing and 64 shop owners were booked for flouting lockdown norms.

From tomorrow, Covid-19 patients in home isolation in the city will receive calls from final year MBBS students who will monitor their health and also help them in case of any worsening symptoms. Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC) has hired around 135 such students at a monthly pay of Rs 40,000 for three months to sit in a zonal control room where they will be assigned patients to monitor through phone calls. At a introductory meeting on Friday, these doctors were also told that their help would be needed in field work, if necessary. GCC is expected to hire around 300 such doctors.

DMK MPs and MLAs would offer one-month salary to the chief minister’s relief fund to help Tamil Nadu in its fight against Covid-19, party president and chief minister M K Stalin said in a statement on Friday. On Thursday, DMK Trust announced that it would donate Rs 1 crore to the CM relief fund. Later, party treasurer T R Baalu presented the cheque to the chief minister. Through a video on Thursday, Stalin appealed to Tamils settled worldwide to come forward and donate to the CM relief fund as the state gears up to fight the Covid scare amid financial constraints. He promised that the fund would be utilised only for measures undertaken to contain Covid-19 and the expenses would be placed before the public in a transparent manner.

Oxygen production at the Sterlite plant in Tuticorin was halted due a technical snag on Thursday night. This has come as an unexpected hurdle for hospitals across the state as the plant was expected to scale up production and reach its full capacity of 1,050 tonnes oxygen over the next few days. “A technical snag has developed in the cold box at our oxygen plant in Tuticorin, leading to a temporary pause in production. The possibility of minor technical fluctuations was anticipated given that the plant has been unattended for three years,” a statement released by Sterlite on Friday read.

Hospitals scrambled for supplies of lifesaving oxygen on Friday as Tamil Nadu reported a spike in Covid-19 cases and deaths, straining the state’s resources, overwhelming the healthcare system and leaving doctors and nurses exhausted. In Chennai, there were tense moments overnight at the VHS hospital, which has more than 50 oxygen-dependent patients, 30 of them in the ICU, as oxygen supplies fell to dangerously low levels — just enough for 20 minutes — a little before midnight. The oxygen truck arrived in the nick of time and supplied 1,000 litres of liquid medical oxygen.

Tamil Nadu reported 31,892 new Covid-19 cases and 288 deaths on Friday, pushing the number of active cases in the state to1.95 lakh. The cumulative case tally crossed the 15-lakh mark while the toll was revised to 17,056. While health experts say it is too early too see the effect of lockdown on fresh cases, the vaccination centres are facing the heat. On Friday, 52,730 people took the vaccine till 7pm compared to 92,732 on Thursday. Hotspot Chennai reported fewer cases for the second consecutive day, but the number of active cases in the city continued to increase. On Friday, the city reported 6,538 new cases compared to 6,791 on Thursday and 7,574 on Wednesday. But during the same period, active cases increased from 40,613 to 44,313.