NE NEWS SERVICE
CHENNAI, OCT 20
Tamil Nadu on Tuesday recorded a further dip in the number of COVID-19 cases with 3,094 people testing positive for the virus, pushing the tally to 6,94,030. As many as 50 people have succumbed to the virus taking the death toll to 10,741, a bulletin issued by the health department said.
The total number of recoveries continued to outnumber new infections with 4,403 people getting discharged, aggregating to 6,46,555. Active cases including those in isolation were at 36,734. Testing of samples on Tuesday stood at 80,371 cumulatively taking the tally to 91,12,067 specimens being examined till date, the bulletin said.
Tamil Nadu does not use Rapid Antigen Diagnostic Tests (RADT) and all tests are RT-PCR (Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction based).
Tamil Nadu has been witnessing a decline in the number of new infections over the last few days. The state reported 3,536 new infections on Monday.
On October 18, the state saw the daily new cases dropping below the 4,000 mark, months after hovering around the 5,000 mark.
Chennai, which recorded a dip in the number of cases below the four digit mark on Monday, recorded 857 new cases today.
Of the 6.94 lakh cases, Chennai accounts for 1,91,754.
Districts also saw a decline in number of new infections with just five of them reporting new cases in three digits.
Coimbatore saw its virus tally go up by 263, Chengalpet 191, Salem 169, Thiruvallur 137 and Tiruppur 125.
Tenkasi and Perambalur saw the least number of new infections with eight people testing COVID-19 positive, each.
Among the 50 deceased, 31 died in government hospitals while 19 in private.
Of the deceased, 26 were above the age of 70 which include a nonagenarian.
Two private labs have received approval to conduct COVID-19 testing, taking the total number of such facilities operating in the state to 194, the bulletin said.
