Narayanasamy Balakrishnan, the President of auto component manufacturer Sundram Fasteners, passed away in Chennai on Friday due to COVID-19. The 65-year-old was at the TVS group company for 12 years at the time of his passing.
According to OneIndia, the source of his infection was traced to his driver, and Balakrishnan had been admitted to a hospital for treatment. The report states that his wife also tested positive, and is currently being treated for the same.
An alumnus of IIT-Madras, Balakrishnan joined Sundram Fasteners in 2008 as vice-president of the fasteners division. As President, he headed the fastener, hot forging and automatic transmission and wind energy fasteners businesses.
Prior to his stint at Sundram Fasteners, he was a Senior Vice President at Bharat Forge for nearly four years.
On Saturday, Tamil Nadu reported a record single-day spike of 2,396 fresh COVID-19 cases, registering over 2,000 infections for a fourth straight day as the overall tally rose to 56,845 in the state. 38 more people succumbed to the virus, taking the toll in the state to 704.
This was the fourth consecutive day the state has recorded over 2,000 COVID-19 cases.
Chennai continued to clock a majority of the cases among districts with 1,254 cases on Saturday, pushing the overall tally to 39,641 till date.
As many as 1,045 were discharged across the state on Saturday, taking the number of recoveries to 31,316 in the state.
The number of active cases currently stands at 24,822.
Among the 2,396 fresh cases, 64 of them were returnees from other states and countries, the bulletin said adding 1,499 were men while 897 women contracted the contagion.
Among the 38 fatalities reported on Saturday, five were without comorbidities which include a 26-year old man from neighbouring Tiruvallur, the bulletin said.
The state capital also leads in the number of fatalities at 554 of the total 704.
It may be noted that the government has announced a 12-day lockdown which came into effect from Friday as part of its measures to curb the spread of the virus as Chennai and neighbouring districts have been constituting the bulk of infections in the state.
Of the total 56,845 virus cases reported so far, 47,277 are people in the age group of 13 and 60 years while 2,804 are children below the age of 12 and 6,764 are above the age of 60, the bulletin said. Twenty of them were transgender persons.