Covid count: Salem stabilizes, Tiupur spikes, Coimbatore sprints

Salem district, which was topping the Covid charts in western Tamil Nadu till a week ago appeared to have stabilized, while Coimbatore caught up fast to become the district with highest Covid incidence.
On Sunday, when the region’s Covid death toll touched 100 and the total case count crossed the 10,000-mark, Coimbatore recorded yet another sharp spike with 220 fresh cases.Salem came second with 162 cases, followed by Dharmapuri which had its sharpest spike ever of 131 cases. Other districts in the region saw far lesser number of new cases with Namakkal adding just nine more to its Covid tally.
Salem district did have a surge after a long period of lull for more than a week, but still its rate of increase was lower compared to Coimbatore.
Salem accounted for 40% of the cases in eight western districts on July 1. But on Sunday, its share came down to 28 %, while the share of Coimbatore has spiked from 24 % at the start of this month to 33 % now. In terms of active cases too, Salem’s contribution to the region’s Covid pool has come down drastically while that of Coimbatore has spiked correspondingly.
Health officials in Coimbatore say they are doing all that they can to control the spread. Authorities say that though the numbers appear to go skyward in the district, most of the cases are within containment zones and are a result of diligent tracing and testing. “There is no question of any lapse on our part. We have tightened the borders, we are tracing and testing all the contacts of Covid positive people, we are creating containment zones and now we have extended the weekend lockdown duration also,” a district administration officer said.
Salem health officials say that chief minister Edappadi K Palaniswami expressed deep concern at the rising number of Covid cases in Salem during his recent visit. Since then the officials have tightened measures.
Salem municipal corporation commissioner R Sadeesh said that they are testing more than 700 people every day in Salem city which has a population of about 10 lakh.
From 983 ten days ago, Salem’s active case count has come down to 894 as the daily increase in new cases has dropped. Health officials here say that Salem has the highest number of containment zones. “All residents in containment zones are given kabasura kudineer, zinc tablets, arsenic album daily,’’ Sadeesh said.
Among other districts, Tirupur, Dharmapuri and Krishnagiri have shown a steady rise in cases while Erode and Namakkal are at the bottom of the list.