Tamil Nadu sees spike in new Covid-19 cases

Daily coronavirus cases in Tamil Nadu have once again crossed the 500-mark on Friday (it was 543) following a spike in the number of infections in Chennai due to family clusters.

Nearly 450 of the Covid-19 cases reported in the last 15 days were from 209 families. Many of them had attended marriages and funerals, Health Secretary J Radhakrishnan told newspersons on Thursday.

On February 4, the number of daily infections declined to less than 500 to 494 after a gap of 277 days. It reached a low of 438 on February 20, but the number slowly increased and crossed the 500-mark on Friday to take the total number of cases in the State to 8,53,992.

However, after 562 persons were discharged on Friday, the number of active cases stood at 3,954.

There were five deaths registered and 54,863 samples tested.

In Chennai, the number of infections crossed the 200-mark on Friday to a total of 225 cases as against 189 on Thursday. In the rest 36 districts, the number of daily cases was less than 100, according to the health department bulletin.