New Delhi: Though the state has been witnessing a steady decline in both active and fresh COVID cases, the Tamil Nadu Health Department is reportedly keen on implementing stringent measures including wearing of masks, social distancing, and increasing the volume of tests, besides massive vaccination drives. This comes after 15 districts witnessed a fresh spike in new Covid-19 cases. The state health department has already called upon the district administrations to immediately focus on the clusters or areas that are contributing to the new cases. It has also sent riders to the government for implementing stringent measures again.
The state health, police, and revenue departments have geared up together to ensure that people follow Covid protocols as doctors recommend that the basic principles have to be adhered to.
Tamil Nadu goes for focused and intensified testing
Speaking to IANS, State Health Secretary J Radhakrishnan said, “As our neighboring states like Maharashtra and Kerala are showing a slight increase in cases, Tamil Nadu goes for focused disease containment. Epidemiologists have already recommended focused and intensified testing as any fallout of relaxations would only reflect after a few days. The focus is on workplace intervention strategies — testing, screening, and identification of clusters.”
Suchithra V. Menon, an epidemiologist working with a research center in Chennai told IANS: “Focus should be on clusters, whether small or big and intensified and focused testing must be conducted. The state can use antigen testing methods also to increase the speed of the results.”
Districts that saw an increase in cases
Thanjavur, Madurai Tiruvannamalai, Kallakurichi, Perambalur, Villupuram, Nilgiris, Sivaganga, Tirupathur are among the 15 districts with a high number of COVID cases.
COVID-19 cases in Tamil Nadu
Tamil Nadu recorded 4,481 fresh coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours, pushing the overall caseload to 24.84 lakh, while the toll mounted to 32,721 with 102 deaths.
As many as 5,044 people recovered and got discharged today, aggregating to 24,13,930 leaving 37,526 active infections, a medical bulletin said.
As many as 23 districts reported new infections in double digits while there were no fresh deaths in 12 districts, the bulletin said.
Chennai saw 249 people contracting the contagion aggregating to 5,32,759 till date.
The number of COVID-19 related fatalities in the State capital also reached 8,191.
The testing of RT-PCR samples stood at 1,63,654 in the last 24 hours, pushing the cumulative number of specimens examined so far to 3.30 crore.