TN count crosses 16k, Chennai tally 10k

Number Of People Cured Exceeds Cases

Ram.Sundaram@timesgroup.com

Chennai:  25.05.2020

For the first time since May 1, the number of people cured of Covid-19 in Tamil Nadu exceeded the number of those being treated on Sunday, even as Chennai’s count crossed 10,000 and the state’s 16,000. Eight more deaths were reported taking the state toll to 111.

With the state reporting 765 fresh cases, 587 of them in Chennai, pushing up the state tally to 16,277, public health experts said the increase in the number of those cured indicated treatment was good, not a flattening of the epidemic curve. While 8,324 positive patients were discharged following treatment till Sunday, 7,839 were still under treatment.

T Sundararaman, former dean of TISS’s School of Health System Studies, said flattening of the curve can happen when the number of new cases is steady.

A guest worker with his child in Chennai

Hotels charge ₹2,500/day for quarantine guests

But there was a constant growth in new infections of between 500 and 800 a day in TN for almost a month now, Sundararaman pointed out. “We tend to test for symptomatic cases only in hotspots and not in other areas and that is why we miss clusters unless they become very big. Kallakurichi, which reported a sharp increase, is an example,” he added.

Not a single case was reported in Kallakurichi for more than 15 days in April and only nine people tested positive till May 1. But at present the district has 136 active cases, many of them returning home from other states. On Sunday, 15 returnees from Maharashtra tested positive in the district.

Across the state on Sunday, 44 people who returned from other states, tested positive. Of them, 39 were from Maharashtra and two were from West Bengal. Others were from Delhi, Kerala and Karnataka.

With more domestic and international flights expected to reach Chennai from Monday, the government is preparing to increase beds in its quarantine facilities and rope in more hotels. A revenue official from Tambaram said that most hotels in Chennai were charging ₹2,500 a day and they were trying to find cheaper options. Chennai also has more than 1,500 people in home isolation and the number was expected to increase with the city’s case count touching 10,576.

Industrial units in the city's suburbs too were reporting infections. Following 17 cases reported at Nokia Solutions and Network in Sriperumbudur, three employees from the nearby Hyundai plant tested positive on Sunday.

On the positive side, Coimbatore continued to have zero cases for the 21st day and Erode, Nagapattinam, Salem and Sivaganga did not report any new cases for 48 hours or more.

All eight deaths reported were from Chennai and its suburbs. The deceased were aged between 46 and 68 and had comorbidities, said the official release.