Comments
Death toll due to coronavirus in Tamil Nadu crossed the 1,000 mark after 68 Covid-19 patients died on Saturday — highest in a single day — to take the toll to 1,025.
The worrying factor is the pace at which the virus has caused the deaths. While it took almost two months to reach 184 fatalities (as on June 1), it took just 27 days to break the 1,000 mark barrier.
Out of the total 1,025 deaths in the State, in Chennai alone 776 Covid-19 patients died and the balance 249 was in districts. The mortality rate in the State that was 0.78 per cent on June 1 has increased to 1.31 per cent today.
State had months to prepare, says expert
Commenting on the increase in the death rate, Dr Ram Gopal Krishnan, Consultant, Infectious Diseases, Apollo Hospitals, said that the virus spread in Tamil Nadu, especially Chennai, is hitting the peak. Going by experiences in other cities across the world, when this disease hits densely populated areas with a large congregation of vulnerable people living in close proximity, the death toll is high.
The disease spreads very fast. Despite lockdown and intensive social distancing measures have been implemented, the disease overwhelms the systems. This is expected, known and the government had three to four months to prepare exactly for this scenario, he said.
The whole purpose of the national lockdown is to get States ready in such a scenario by ramping up the hospital beds, ventilators, have trained doctors and nurses to handle critical care, build up oxygen capacity and generally supplement the healthcare system in the State to cope up with such a surge. This is the situation that other international cities went through, he added.
More test positive
Meanwhile, a further 3,713 coronavirus positive cases were added in the State to take the infection tally to 78,335. With a record 2,737 Covid-19 patients discharged today, the number of active cases was 33,213.
In Chennai, there was an addition of 1,939 cases (total crossed the 50,000 mark to 51,699); followed by Chengalpattu with 248; Madurai with 217; Thiruvallur with 146; Thiruvannamalai with 110; Vellore with 118 and the rest of the numbers split among other districts, including Kancheepuram (98), Ranipet (96) and Ramanathapuram (93).
On Saturday, 34,805 samples were tested, says a health ministry bulletin.
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.