Number of Active Covid-19 Cases in Tamil Nadu Decline, but Officials Advise Caution

Chennai: Tamil Nadu has recorded a slight dip in active cases of COVID-19, riding on the wave of recovery of a number of patients and stringent cluster containment. Bureaucrats, however, do not see this as an indicator of the things to come.

The total number of active coronavirus cases in the state stood at 908 on Thursday, as 54 fresh cases were recorded, taking the tally to 1,683. Today alone, 90 people were discharged, while 1,787 remain in hospital isolation wards and over 23,300 in home quarantine.

Considering the numbers in isolation and home quarantine, health officials say that the marginal dip in the number of active cases is no cause for celebration.

Credit: Poornima Murali, with data from Tamil Nadu goverment

In Chennai, areas such as Royapuram, Anna Nagar, and Teynampet have become hotspots. Royapuram alone accounts for 117 cases. The city has a total of 400 cases, the numbers steadily rising every day.

A bureaucrat involved in containment efforts explained that the state has constituted a multi-tier structure across health, revenue and police departments for contacting primary relatives of COVID-19 patients and conducting their tests.

He said, “I think our efforts at contact tracing are paying off, little by little. But in matters of public health, we should always wait and watch.”

Sectors such as retail, hospitality and tourism are expected to see a tremendous challenge going forward, but the state government has been able to identify a number of continuous process industries. In a notification issued today, construction projects in rural areas, de-silting tanks, dam-related work, road and water supply, sanitation, brick kilns and hardware material supply were some of the operations that were allowed.

Continuous process industries refer to industries that require production without any interruption because materials used are processed continuously in motion.

Tamil Nadu is home to the vehicle manufacturing industry, leaders of which held a video conference with Chief Minister Edapaddi K Palaniswami today. A senior official of the industries department said the leaders, including TVS Motor chief Venu Srinivasan, "completely agreed" with the stance of the state government on extending the lock down.

However, they had a few requests, which are likely to be taken up with members of an expert committee of the government later.