Tamil Nadu reports 48 new Covid-19 cases; one more death

Chennai: One person died in Tamil Nadu of Covid-19 virus-related complications on Tuesday, taking the death toll from the pandemic in the State to eight, even as the state reported 48 new positive cases of the infection. The State currently has 738 positive cases of Covid-19, the Tamil Nadu Health Secretary Beela Rajesh said.
The Vellore Collector confirmed the death of a 45-year-old man on Tuesday, who had tested positive for COVID-19 and was admitted to Christian Medical College hospital, Vellore. While the Collector made the announcement on Tuesday night, the Health Department confirmed the same through an official bulletin on Wednesday.

Rajesh said of the positive cases on Wednesday, 42 were from a ‘single source’, without mentioning the source by name, although it is being widely understood to be referring to cases stemming from the Tablighi Jamaat conference held in Delhi in March. She maintained that the State was still in stage-2 of the pandemic and that every effort was being made to ensure it did not move to stage-3.

With respect to the other six cases, she said two patients had travel/contact history and that the Health Department is probing the source of infection for the other four patients. She added that four doctors had tested positive for the disease in the State so far and that twenty-one people have been discharged so far, of which one patient is a 72-year-old man.

On Monday, the state government decided to use ‘single source’ in its bulletins in order to not give a communal colour to the situation.

Chennai now has 156 cases, followed by 60 in Coimbatore. On Wednesday, the highest number of cases were reported from Theni which had 16 people testing positive.

In all, 60,739 people are under home quarantine, 230 in government quarantine facilities and 1953 people under isolation at hospitals across the state. As many as 6,095 samples have been tested so far, of which 344 are under process.