Tamil Nadu reported 26,981 new cases of Coronavirus in the last 24 hours, up by 12.9 per cent from yesterday, with the state's positivity rate at 18.6 per cent following celebrations of the Pongal festival. 35 people have died and 17,456 were discharged in the period.
There has been a spike in Covid cases in villages as many people travelled to their homes for Pongal, the state's Health Minister Ma. Subramanian said.
Cautioning people about a likely spike in cases over the next few days because of recent festival-related travel of around eight lakh people from the state capital Chennai. The infection has consequently spread to villages, he said, adding that 24,000 out of 1.21 lakh villages in the state have Covid cases. Breaking up the data, he elaborated that out of 1.27 lakh streets in the state, more than 28,000 have Covid cases.
The new cases were detected among the 1,44,816 samples tested today. 8,816 people with Covid are admitted in hospitals and the total number of active cases stands at 1,70,661.
Of the new cases, Chennai accounted for 8,007 fresh infections, down from 8,305 yesterday, followed by Coimbatore with 3,082, Kanniyakumari 1,008 and Virudhunagar 435 new cases. On Tuesday, 23,888 new cases were detected in the state.
Only 9,000 out of 1.92 lakh hospital beds are currently occupied, 94 per cent of the cases are in home isolation.
