Tamil Nadu Covid-19 lockdown news: State govt extends total lockdown till 6am on June 21

The Tamil Nadu government on Friday extended the total lockdown by another week ending 6am on June 21 and modified the relaxations further in 27 districts, including Chennai, where caseload is on a decline.

The number of containment zones in the city has declined to less than 100 now, according to the Greater Chennai Corporation. On May 24, containment zones, which are streets with more than 10 active Covid-19 cases, numbered 765. On May 31, the number fell to 365 containment zones, and to 81 by June 7.

As lockdown restrictions are being eased, airlines and railways have started to reintroduce trains and flights that were cancelled due to poor patronage. Chennai airport saw the number of departures increase from 30 to 35 flights in mid-May to 44 flights on June 9 while railways have resumed a few trains including a Rajdhani service to Delhi as passengers are returning.

The Covid-19 weekly positivity rate of seven of the ten districts in the southern region has dropped below the state’s average in the first week of June compared to the last week of May. The dip in Madurai was more pronounced, from 7.9% to 5.1%, pushing the district to 36th in terms of positivity rate in the state among the 37 districts. While the state’s positivity rate was 13.2% in the first week of June, Tuticorin (13.1), Virudhunagar (12.2), Dindigul (11.3), Tenkasi (10.6), Tirunelveli (10.3), Sivaganga (8.8) and Madurai had a positivity rate below the state’s average.

Many of the 11,800 fever surveillance workers who joined Greater Chennai Corporation on April 8 have not got safety gear on time. A few in zones like Ambattur have not got salaries too. The civic body says it has been maintaining a record of the kits, each with five face masks,10 surgical masks and a sanitiser bottle, issued to workers once in 15 days, but those like Mahesh* (name changed) in Adyar zone say the last kit was issued three weeks ago.

“My father died of cardiac arrest two days after testing negative [for Covid-19] and coming home from hospital. He was the sole breadwinner of our family,” said 12-year-old Sukriti*. Her mother, a homemaker, is extremely worried about the future of her two children. As of Wednesday, district child protection units identified about 1,400 children in TN who were either orphaned or lost one parent to Covid-19 since last year, with 50 coming under the first category.

PMK leader S Ramadoss on Thursday demanded that the state government enforce strict lockdown for the next couple of weeks to arrest the spread of Covid-19 cases and contain the pandemic. He said the government had not enforced strict lockdown and a lot of people had not complied with lockdown guidelines. “It is like rolling out a red carpet to coronavirus,” Ramadoss said in a statement.