Chennai: Fighting to contain the spread of COVID-19, Tamil Nadu government has confronted with a fresh problem in dealing with the virus as people returning home from other parts of the country were testing positive.
On Saturday, the State recorded 477 cases, out of which 384 are local people and 93 of those returned home from Maharashtra, Gujarat and Dhaka, an official bulletin said. The ‘others’ included 81 people returned from Maharashtra, seven from Gujarat, four from Dhaka and one from Andhra Pradesh.
The southern Tirunelveli district recorded 44 cases, and all of them were those returned from Maharashtra, the bulletin said. Similarly, Sivaganga district, which was free from positive cases for more than 20 days, recorded nine cases – all from Maharashtra.
Four people who returned from Dhaka and tested positive were quarantined at a facility in the Chennai Airport, the bulletin said. But for those returned from other parts of the country, the State recorded 384 cases, less than 500 cases for the third successive day.
Chennai, topping the districts in the total number of positive cases, witnessed fresh surge on Saturday, recording 332 cases, constituting about 87 per cent of the total cases. Fifteen other districts recorded positive cases while 22 districts were free from the virus on Saturday.
The below 500 cases in the last three days may also be due to the reduced number of testing in the State. Contrary to more than 13,000 tests, a total of 10,535 samples were lifted, and 8,270 people were subjected for testing on Saturday, according to the bulletin.
After the Centre changed the guidelines for discharge of patients, a record number of 939 people were discharged on Saturday. This was the highest number of people discharged on a single day. With this, 3,538 people have so far been discharged, the bulletin said.
The number of ‘active cases’ stood at 6,970 and 4,415 with symptoms for the virus and described as ‘suspected cases’ were detained in isolation wards in different hospitals, the bulletin said.
