Daily caseload jumps by 60% in Tirupur

Tirupur district reported a record high of 1,561 fresh Covid-19 cases on Tuesday, sending health authorities and the public into a tizzy. At 60%, this is the sharpest spike ever in the district from 985 cases on Monday, when there was a marginal dip in the cases that had crossed the 1,000-mark past week.
While the garment units had shut operations voluntarily from last Friday, the sharp rise in the cases is suspected to be a fallout of the spread that could have happened in the units past week.
Now, Tirupur is the district with second highest daily caseload in the western region after Coimbatore and the sixth highest in the state. The total number of cases has breached the 39,000-mark in the district, which presently has 7,092 active cases. The district also reported three Covid deaths on the day.
Health officials are perplexed over the sudden spike in cases and working out ways to handle the situation. With the district constantly reporting an increase in the daily caseload, the stress on the health infrastructure continues to grow as well.
There are efforts to ramp up oxygen beds in Tirupur, where the shortage is acute. Presently, there are 800-odd oxygen beds in government and private hospitals. But the demand keeps growing and there are instances of patients waiting in ambulances for hours together for oxygen beds.
After an oxygen bus was pressed into service to provide O2 for the patients waiting for beds, the district administration, with the help of industrial units and NGOs, is setting up a 112-O2 bed facility in Tirupur Kumaran college and another 30-O2 bed facility at an undisclosed location.