The first 12 days of the lockdown, which started on May 10, has failed to slowdown the Covid-19 infection in Tamil Nadu, which continues to report an increase in daily coronavirus cases. The lockdown which ends on May 24 will, in all probability, be extended.
However, the silver lining is that Chennai is showing early signs of the curve flattening. People adhering to strict lockdown restrictions and many getting vaccinated are the two main reasons for Chennai’s numbers declining, experts say.
Health Secretary J Radhakrishnan on Thursday told newspersons that the Covid-19 cases may peak in the State by May-end. Other States such as Maharashtra, Delhi, Karnataka and Kerala have peaked, and Tamil Nadu is two weeks behind them.
The State on Friday added 36,184 cases. After 24,478 Covid-19 patients recovered, the number of active cases in Tamil Nadu stood at 2.74 lakh. and 467 deaths registered. Over 1.74 lakh tests have been done.
Test Positivity Rate
What is also worrying is that the Test Positivity Rate continues to rise. On the TPR was 20.78 per cent up from 19.82 per cent on May 10 and in this period the number of samples tested daily has increased to 1.74 lakh (1.46 lakh).
In the last one week, the number of new infections has grown by an average 2.1 per cent every day.
Recoveries high
On the positive side, for every 100 confirmed cases, 84 have recovered, says Covid19india.org, a volunteer-driven crowdsourced site tracking the coronavirus in India.
While across the State, the infection has increased during the lockdown, Chennai - the hub for the infections - saw a drop to 5,913 on Friday as against 6,297 on Thursday and 7,149 on May 10.
Sumanth Raman, a medical doctor, said that the surge started in Chennai and then in the other parts of the State. So, one would expect Chennai to plateau first. TPR has remained more or less the same for the last 5-6 days and the city has more vaccinated people than elsewhere. “I expect the rest of the State to start plateauing by the end of next week while Chennai could start declining significantly by then,” he said.
Every district is growing at a different rate, other than Chennai. For the entire State to settle it will take next month. Full lockdown will show its effect from next week, said an analyst tracking Covid data.
Meanwhile, LocalCircles, the Noida-based independent community engagement and social media platform, in a survey said that 84 per cent of Tamil Nadu residents support lockdown restrictions to continue till May 31. Nearly, 74 per cent residents believe home delivery of essentials should be the primary modelduring lockdown, says the survey in which over 20,000 persons from 28 districts participated.
Date | Daily cases | Daily samples | Test Positivity | Recovered |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
| |||
tested | ratio (in %) | |||
May-21 | 36,184 | 1,74,112 | 20.78 | 24,478 |
May-20 | 35,579 | 1,71,804 | 20.71 | 25,368 |
May-19 | 34,875 | 1,70,355 | 20.47 | 23,863 |
May-18 | 33,059 | 1,60,350 | 20.62 | 21,362 |
May-17 | 33,075 | 1,56,278 | 21.16 | 20,486 |
May-16 | 33,181 | 1,66,812 | 19.89 | 21,317 |
May-15 | 33,658 | 1,64,945 | 20.41 | 20,905 |
May-14 | 31,892 | 1,60,042 | 19.93 | 20,037 |
May-13 | 30,621 | 1,58,129 | 19.36 | 19,287 |
May-12 | 30,355 | 1,56,356 | 19.41 | 19,508 |
May-11 | 29,272 | 1,56,111 | 18.75 | 19,182 |
May-10 | 28,978 | 1,46,233 | 19.82 | 20,904 |