Tamil Nadu on Friday continued to witness a sharp rise on the new COVID-19 infections by adding 13,776 new cases to the caseload of 10,51,487 while 78 fatalities took the toll to 13,395, the Health Department said. The state saw 95,048 active infections while recoveries mounted to 9,43,044 today with 8,078 patients being discharged.
The state capital continued to constitute the bulk of the total cases accounting for 3,842 new infections, totalling 3,01,541 till date. It leads in the number of fatalities too with 4,512 people succumbing to the virus.
The number of samples tested today were 1,25,593, pushing the cumulative number of specimens examined so far to 2,17,54,456.
Besides Chennai, as many as 30 districts have clocked new infections in triple digits. Chengalpet saw 985, Coimbatore 889, Cuddalore 209, Dharmapuri 121, Dindigul 227, Erode 331, Kancheepuram 395, Kanyakumari 218, Karur 105, Krishnagiri 370, Madurai 502, Nagapattinam 170, Namakkal 195, Pudukottai 104, Ranipet 228 and Salem 478, the bulletin said.
Tenkasi witnessed 173 new cases, Thanjavur 333, Theni 184, Tirupathur 148, Thiruvallur 807, Thiruvannamalai 176, Tiruvarur 128, Tuticorin 371, Tirunelveli 517, Tiruppur 295, Tiruchirappalli 320, Vellore 297, Villupuram 160 and Virudhunagar 146, it said.
Among the 78 deceased, 12 of them, including a 27- year-old woman from Tenkasi, was the youngest victim to succumb to the virus without any pre-existing illness.
The patient who was admitted on April 20 died the next day at a government medical college hospital due to acute respiratory failure. As many as 44 of them who tested positive today were returnees from various destinations, the bulletin said.
The Tamil Nadu government on Friday urged the Centre to allocate an "assured supply" of 20 lakh doses of vaccines to ensure unhindered immunisation and batted against any restriction on supply of Remdesivir, used in COVID-19 treatment. Chief Minister K Palaniswami told Prime Minister Narendra Modi that an Integrated Vaccine complex near here was ready and appealed that it be brought to working condition at the earliest to augment production of COVID vaccines.
In a letter to Modi, the chief minister said directions are being issued by National and "certain State regulators," prioritising supplies by individual manufacturers to certain states and restricting Remdesivir sales only within the state where the drug was being produced. "This would be very damaging to the availability of such valuable life saving drugs in places of need. At this stage, any restrictive orders by individual States, should be strictly barred to ensure easy accessibility of Remdesivir," he said.