Tamil Nadu crosses 70-lakh mark in Covid-19 tests, tally of infections touch 5.8 lakh

The Covid-19 tally in Tamil Nadu rose to 5.80 lakh with 5,791 fresh cases on Sunday as the capital city saw a further rise in its daily count, a trend witnessed in the last few days.

The state clocked a record 96,102 Covid-19 tests, taking the total number of samples examined so far past the 70 lakh mark, while the death toll mounted to 9,313 with 80 more succumbing to the virus, the health department said.

A total of 5,706 people were discharged from hospitals on Sunday as the cumulative recoveries touched 5,25,154 and the active cases stood at 46,341, it said in a bulletin. Chennai, which saw its daily cases crossing the 1,000 mark on September 24 after a gap of a few weeks, added 1,280 fresh infections on Sunday, taking its tally to 1,63,423 out of the state's aggregate of 5,80,808.

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After hovering in the 900 plus region for days in a row, the city recorded 1,089 cases on Thursday, 1,193 on Friday and 1,187 on Saturday. On the positive side, the number of single-day tests hit a fresh high with 96,102 samples. A total of 71,00,660 specimens had been examined so far. The previous record was 94,877 samples on September 25.

The state does not use Rapid Antigen Diagnostic Tests and all the tests so far are RT-PCR (Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction based), considered the gold standard to detect Covid-19. Among the districts, Coimbatore registered 596 new cases on Sunday followed by Salem 378, Chengalpet 296, Tiruvallur 202, Kancheepuram 196 Thanjavur 190, Nilgiris 161, Namakkal 173 and Thiruvarur 123, the bulletin said.

Of the deceased, seventy seven were with co-morbidities, while a 30 year old woman from Karur was among the three who died without any other health issues. Eleven of those who succumbed were aged above 80. Of the 9,313 deceased in the state, the share of Chennai stood at 3,166, the bulletin said.