Sample test count crosses 20L in State, infant among 75 deaths

It recorded 75 fresh COVID-19 deaths, including that of a 56-day-old boy, taking the toll to 2,626, a Health Department bulletin said. Of the total deaths, 21 were reported in Chennai. While 27 deaths were reported in private hospitals, 48 people died in government hospitals and 69 deceased had underlying co-morbid conditions, while six others died of COVID-19 pneumonia. The State also continued to clock high recoveries with the discharges almost matching the fresh cases, leaving only 51,344 active cases out of the total 1,80,643.

A total of 51,066 samples were tested in the past 24 hours in the State, bringing the total number of samples tested in TN to 20,35,645. Of the total samples tested, more than five lakh samples were tested in Chennai and 50,055 people were tested for COVID-19 on Monday alone. While the spread of the pandemic seems to have come under control in Madurai with the district reporting only 158 new cases, Virudhunagar reported 360 new cases, the third highest in the State after Chennai, which reported 1,130 new cases. Tiruvallur had 366 new cases. With Tuesday’s count, Chennai has 88,377 cases so far, the highest in TN. Districts in the periphery of Chennai continued to record a spike with Kancheepuram and Chengalpattu reporting 262 and 256 cases respectively. Coimbatore, Kanniyakumari, Madurai, Ranipet, Theni, Tiruvannamalai, Tiruchy and Vellore also reported more than 100 cases of COVID-19.