NE NEW SERVICE
CHENNAI, JULY 21
Tamil Nadu on Tuesday crossed the two million mark in samples screened so far while 4,965 fresh cases were added, taking the infection count past the 1.80 lakh mark.
Chennai stands as the first metropolitan in the country to have conducted 5,00,000 RT-PCR tests for its residents to prevent the spread of COVID-19.#HereToServe#Covid19Chennai #GCC #Chennai#ChennaiCorporation pic.twitter.com/YaaSH6lEu9
— Greater Chennai Corporation (@chennaicorp) July 21, 2020
The state also recorded 75 fresh COVID-19 deaths, including that of a 56-day old boy, during the day, taking the toll to 2,626, a bulletin from health department said.
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. With testing of 51,066 samples, the third straight day the key figure hovered over the 51,000 mark, a total of 20,35,645 specimens have been examined till date, the bulletin said.
Tamil Nadu has been focusing on aggressive testing, considered by experts as a key strategy to contain the pandemic, and increased the number of centres to 113, including 55 in the private sector.
The number of samples tested crossed the 15 lakh mark on July 10 and another five lakh had been added since then. On Sunday, the state tested 52,993 COVID samples, which is the highest so far in a day.
If the youngest to succumb to the disease on Tuesday was the baby from the city, a 90-year old man died at a private hospital in Vellore. Twenty four of those who died were in the age group of 70-90 and 69 had co-morbidities.
On Tuesday, a total of 4,894 patients were discharged from various hospitals and in total 1,26,670 people have got cured. Chennai recorded 1,130 cases in a continuing trend of relatively less number of fresh cases after being the top hotspot of the virus spread, accounting for a big chunk of the daily infections.
