NE NEWS SERVICE
CHENNAI/PUDUCHERRY, JAN 1
Tamil Nadu on Friday clocked 921 new COVID-19 cases, taking the tally to 8,18,935, while the toll mounted to 12,135 with 13 more deaths.
United Kingdom returnees to the state testing positive for the virus remained at 24 today. Till date, a total 24 returnees and 20 of their contacts have tested positive, a health department bulletin said.
Recoveries continued to outnumber new infections with 1,029 people being discharged from various hospitals, taking the total to 7,98,420 so far.
Of the 921 new cases, Chennai reported 252, while the rest were scattered in other districts. The state capital accounted for 2,25,758 infections out of the 8.18 lakh plus tally.
All 13 people who died had co-morbidities or chronic diseases and one was a returnee from Karnataka, the bulletin said.
The toll of 12,135 included Chennai’s 4,014, the highest in the state. The active cases further dipped to 8,380 till date As many as 67,151 samples were tested on Friday, taking the cumulative total to 1,42,58,645 specimens examined so far.
Dry Run for Covid-19 at 17 places from Saturday: Vijayabaskar
I inaugurated the 100 bedded intensive care unit exclusively for Covid @gmckilpauk in the presence of TN HS @RAKRI1, DME @DNarayanababu, Dean Dr Vasanthamani. @TNDME1 #Hello2021 #vijayabaskar #2021year pic.twitter.com/1sa1xUgfvY
— Dr C Vijayabaskar – Say No To Drugs & DMK (@Vijayabaskarofl) January 1, 2021
Meanwhile, State Health and Family Welfare Minister C Vijayabaskar said Tamil Nadu would conduct a dry run for COVID-19 vaccination at 17 places across the state on Saturday, including Chennai, Coimbatore and the Nilgiris.
“We will begin dry run of the COVID-19 vaccine in Tamil Nadu tomorrow based on ICMR (Indian Council of Medical Research)”, he told reporters after inaugurating a 100 bed ICU facility at the Kilpauk Medical College Hospital here.
Mirror Now's @Mugilan__C spoke to #TamilNadu Health Secretary J. Radhakrishnan over the preparations underway ahead of #CovidVaccine dry run. He revealed that the exercise will be conducted in 4 locations & all parameters from vaccine storage to logistical measures will be tested pic.twitter.com/42TAEyj4MH
— Mirror Now (@MirrorNow) January 1, 2021
The minister said the health department has identified 47,200 centres for the purpose and has provided training to 21,170 health care personnel.
“We are planning to fix a time period of providing vaccination to 25 people in two hours,” he said.
To a query, he said vaccination has to be done carefully since COVID-19 was a new kind of virus and a dry run was important in this regard. The Minister said that in the initial phase, infrastructure facilities to preserve the vaccine, set up in association with Tamil Nadu Medical Services Corporation, would cater to 2.5 crore people.
Responding to another query, he said the government was conducting 70,000 RT-PCR tests a day, despite the daily COVID-19 infections falling below the 1,000 mark. “New COVID-19 cases has dropped significantly (in Tamil Nadu) and we have not reduced the number of sample tests. That is the strategy. We are testing 70,000 samples a day.
The World Health Organisation and Prime Minister Narendra Modi have congratulated us (for the government’s strategy),” he said. Tamil Nadu on December 30 reported below 1,000 new COVID-19 cases nearly after a gap of seven months.
Puducherry
Puducherry logged 32 new coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours while no fresh fatality was reported, a top Health department official said on Friday.
The new cases were identified at the end of testing of 3,068 samples taking the overall tally in the union territory to 38,164, Director of Health and Family Welfare S Mohan Kumar said in a release.
The 32 fresh cases were spread over Puducherry (16), Mahe (10) and Karaikal and Yanam (three each).
As many as 50 patients were discharged from hospitals during the last 24 hours ending 10 AM Friday.
No fresh fatality was reported from any of the four regions-Puducherry, Karaikal, Mahe and Yanam- and the death toll remained at 633.
Mohan Kumar said that fatality and recovery rates were 1.66 per cent and 97.38 per cent respectively.
He said that as many as 4.88 lakh samples were tested so far and it was found that 4.45 lakh samples were negative.
While there were 366 active cases, 37,165 patients had recovered and were discharged so far, he added.
