Tamil Nadu witnesses marginal drop in Covid-19 cases

CHENNAI: Fresh cases in Tamil Nadu dropped marginally to 105 compared to 113 on Friday and 145 on Thursday along with fresh cases in Chennai. Chennai reported 61 new cases compared to 81 on Friday. However, active cases increased to 799 from 756 on Friday and 711 on Thursday.
On Friday, Union health secretary Rajesh Bhushan in a letter to state health secretary J Radhakrishnan said there is an increase in cases and a positivity rate in the country after a few states reported an increase in cases possibility due to the localised spread of infection.
Tamil Nadu has reported an increase in weekly new cases from 335 in the week ending May 27 to 659 in the week ending June 3. Tamil Nadu accounts for nearly 3.13% of new cases in the week ending June 3 and has also seen an increase in positivity rate in the last week to 0.8% from 0.4%. During this time, the number of people admitted to hospitals also increased although more than 98% of Covid beds were vacant.
Bhusan advised the state to continue the implementation and monitoring of necessary measures for prompt and effective management of Covid-19. Besides ensuring Covid appropriate behaviour, he asked the health department to monitor clusters, do adequate testing, monitor SARI cases, and conduct genomic sequencing for prescribed samples.
Radhakrishnan has in turn written to district collectors, GCC commissioner, public health officials, airport directors and deans directing to follow preventive measures besides increasing testing.
On Saturday, health minister Ma Subramanian and senior health officials visited an apartment complex in T Nagar, where six members of a family have been tested positive.
“We have managed to bring cases under control in four educational institutions with cluster control measures,” he said.
“Clusters of cases are now seen in families and apartment complexes too. If people adopt stringent measures, we can bring the situation under control, he said.
After Chennai, Chengalpet reported 13 new cases. With the cluster at the Vellore Institute of Technology in Kelambakkam coming under control, daily cases have come down too, Subramanian said. Coimbatore and Kancheepuram reported seven new cases each, followed by three each in Kanyakumari, Tiruvallur and Trichy.
Dharmapuri, Krishnagiri, Madurai, Namakkal, Ranipet, Sivagangai and Tirunelveli reported one new case each. One person who travelled from Telangana by air tested positive. Chennai (398) and Chengalpet (258) had 82% of the active cases in the state. While Coimbatore had 34 active cases, Tiruvallur had 25 and Kancheepuram reported 19. Nineteen districts reported between one and nine active cases, while 14 others had zero active cases.
By the end of the day, the number of patients in hospitals rose marginally to 44 from 40 on Friday.