A 51-year-old man, who attended the Tablighi Jamaat conference in New Delhi last month and tested positive for COVID-19, passed away in Villupuram on Saturday, taking the death toll due to coronavirus in Tamil Nadu to two.
The patient, who was admitted to the Government Medical College Hospital in Villupuram, 170 Km from Chennai, breathed his last at 7:44 am on Saturday.
“The patient developed breathlessness on Friday night and passed away Saturday morning,” a terse statement from the Health and Family Welfare Department said.
Sources in the district administration said the body of the deceased was buried a little after noon with only a handful of people in attendance, according to the guidelines issued by the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.
This takes the death toll in Tamil Nadu from COVID-19 to two – a 54-year-old man, who is understood to have come in contact with two Thai nationals and tested positive for COVID-19, died on March 25 due to comorbid conditions.
The death of the 51-year-old man comes a day after Health Secretary Dr Beela Rajesh said all COVID-19 patients in Tamil Nadu were stable and none of them were in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). The number of people testing positive for COVID-19 in Tamil Nadu has witnessed a sharp increase since March 30 – 364 out of the total 411 patients belong to the Nizamuddin cluster.
Tamil Nadu, on Friday, reported 102 new patients with 100 of them having attended the Delhi conference, while one person had travel history to the US and the contact or travel history of another who tested positive is being traced. Tamil Nadu now has the second-largest number of COVID-19 patients after Maharashtra.
Of the 411 patients, seven have been discharged from the hospital and two persons are now dead.
TN has so far tested 3,684 samples and has placed 1,580 persons in isolation wards in hospitals, a chunk of them are from the Nizamuddin conference. The testing of 484 samples is under process.