Chennai, Jun 3 (PTI)
Tamil Nadu on Friday saw over 100 cases for the third consecutive day with 113 people testing COVID-19 positive in the last 24 hours, including a returnee from the United Arab Emirates, pushing the tally to 34,55,871, the Health Department said.
The death toll remained unchanged at 38,025 with nil fatalities were recorded in the last 24 hours, a bulletin said.
Witnessing a surge in new cases, the State on June 1 reported 139 daily infections, while on June 2, 145 cases were reported.
As many as 68 people recovered in the last 24 hours, aggregating to 34,17,090, leaving 756 active cases.
Among those tested positive, include 68 men and 45 women.
Chennai accounted for the majority of new cases with 81 infections followed by Chengalpet 11, Tiruvallur 5, Kancheepuram 4, Coimbatore 3, Tirunelveli recorded 2 while Kanyakumari, Krishnagiri, Tenkasi, Thanjavur, Tiruvannamalai, Tiruchirappalli recorded one case each.
The State capital Chennai leads among districts with 370 active infections and overall the tally is 7,52,733 cases.
A total of 14,061 samples were tested in the last 24 hours, pushing the cumulative number of tests so far to 6,66,69,317 the bulletin said.
Meanwhile, Minister for Medical and Family Welfare Ma Subramanian, along with senior officials, inspected the screening of passengers at the international airport here. The Health Department intensified efforts to test those people arriving from countries which have reported monkeypox disease.
“There is no detection of monkey pox disease in Tamil Nadu. We have been testing the passengers arriving from various countries at all the international airports of the State and have screened 1.15 lakh passengers since May 20 till date,” Subramanian told reporters.
He said testing of passengers for COVID-19 was also taking place at the airport by randomly conducting RT-PCR tests for two per cent of passengers, similar to the practice being adopted during the last two years at the airport.
On the status of COVID-19 in Tamil Nadu, he said the daily cases reported today was comparatively less at 113 as compared with 145 on Thursday. He added that majority of the virus cases were from the cluster reported at educational institutions and in some families.
“The cluster of cases reported in educational institutions is gradually declining,” he said.
Recalling the cluster of virus cases reported at the campus of Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (IIT-M), recently, he said over 9,000 samples were collected of which about 200 people tested positive. “All of them have fully recovered and are doing fine and now the IIT-M campus has become COVID-free,” Subramanian said.
On the emergence of new cases on the campus of Vellore Institute of Technology, Kelambakkam, he said the health officials inspected the campus regularly and 6,159 people underwent RT-PCR tests, of which 196 people have tested positive till Thursday.
“All of them have been isolated and closely monitored,” he said.
The Minister appealed to the public to stay cautious in the wake of surge in COVID-19 cases across the country.
