Madurai sees single-day spike of 464 cases, 4 deaths

Madurai sees single-day spike of 464 cases, 4 deaths

Sukshma.R@timesgroup.com

Madurai: 14.07.2020

Covid-19 cases in Madurai reached a recordhigh single-day spike of 464 and four deaths on Monday, taking the total cases in the district to 6,539, including 3,803 active cases, and 120 deaths. However, district health officials said the trend of Covid-19 cases in Madurai district has been more or less steady, with an average of around 300 fresh cases per day since the end of June.

Speaking to TOI, special monitoring officer for Covid-19 for Madurai, Dr B Chandramohan, said the sudden spike was because samples sent to other districts return only on Monday. “Results of around 800 samples, which were sent to other districts, returned on Monday. So, this spike shouldn’t be seen as a singleday increase. We have done more than 4,000 tests on Monday alone,” he said. As Madurai Medical College is able to carry out tests on 2,500 samples per day, around 1,500 samples are being sent to labs in other districts, including Coimbatore.

The official said that the situation in Madurai was stable as of now. “The average trend of Covid-19 cases has been around 300 cases per day and there has been no exponential rise so far. The focus now is on stabilising the trend by making use of complete lockdown for targeted testing,” said Dr Chandramohan.

Two days ago, after a gradual rise in active cases for days, the number started to come down with more people getting discharged every day. As of Monday, 1,175 asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic Covid-19 patients were under monitored home isolation. “Active cases will come down if the situation remains stable since even now 85%-90% of cases are asymptomatic and mildly symptomatic. Only around 10% cases are moderate while 2% are severe,” said Dr Chandramohan.