TN's recovery rate 77.8 per cent, daily cases continues to see slide

COVID-19 recovery rate stood at 77.8 per cent in Tamil Nadu and the doubling time in Chennai improved to 65 days while the state reported 5,063 new cases on Tuesday and the infection count mounted to 2.68 lakh.

With the death of 108 more patients, the death toll rose to 4,349, the government said in a bulletin.

The active cases were 55,152 and 6,501 patients were discharged on Tuesday and in total 2,68,285 people have so far tested positive in Tamil Nadu.

From July 27, there is a dip in daily cases in the state and Tuesday''s count is in sync with that trend.

Two men, aged 35 and 37, were among the deceased and the dead include 99 with co-morbidities and nine with none.

Health Minister C Vijayabaskar said recovery rate was 77.8 per cent in the state and the doubling time in Chennai was now 65 days, while in some city divisions it was even higher at 100 days.

The doubling time here was 25.42 days in the first week of July and 18 days on June 28.

Despite absence of vaccination and no specific drug of choice, in view of the holistic treatment, 2,08,784 people have got cured as on date and the recovery rate is 77.8 per cent, the highest in the country, he said.

Expressing hopes of the COVID curve "flattening" in the state in view of a slew of measures against the spread of virus from early diagnosis to holistic treatment, he appealed to the people to more rigorously follow norms like wearing masks and maintaining social distance.

Right from the start, Tamil Nadu created the maximum COVID (confirmatory, RT-PCR) testing centres in the country and every district has a government lab, he said. A total of 28,92,395 samples have been tested till date and the state has a total of 125 labs (60 government and 65 private).

Recently, the ICMR and the Centre lauded the Tamil Nadu government for the "lowest turnaround time in testing in India" for the infrastructure to provide results within 24 hours and at a maximum of 48 hours, he said.

Regretting false news and rumours during the times of pandemic in social media related to the virus, he said it was a punishable offence and pointed to one such post that falsely claimed that 43 doctors died in Tamil Nadu.

"DMK''s Udhayanidhi Stalin posted this in his Twitter account and it is condemnable...the Indian Medical Association chief in Tamil Nadu has refuted such false claims that 43 doctors died," he said.

Also, the Minister warned of legal action against "those who wantonly disseminate fake information that could cause confusion and panic among the people and demoralise the medical fraternity."

Chief Minister K Palaniswami was directly monitoring the anti-COVID measures from early identification to treatment in the fight against the deadly pathogen, he said, pointing out that as many as 57 people got cured using plasma therapy at the Rajiv Gandhi government hospital here.

There are 1,18,000 beds in the state and the infrastructure in state-run hospitals have been scaled up with oxygen facilities at a cost Rs 76 crore.

Also, requisite equipment and life saving drugs, including high flow nasal oxygen cannulas and anti-viral ''Remdesivir'' were procured, he said, adding people with co- morbidity have been given special care and a special protocol was created to treat them.