Tamil Nadu’s tally of confirmed coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases crossed the 200-mark on Wednesday. With 110 more persons who attended the Tablighi Jamaat conference at Nizamuddin in Delhi testing positive for COVID-19 in 15 districts, the total number of cases in the State increased to 234.
Health Secretary Beela Rajesh said of the 110, one person was from Myanmar and another from Indonesia. “Till yesterday, 80 people who attended the Delhi conference tested positive for COVID-19. With the April 1 count, a total of 190 who attended the conference have tested positive in the State,” she told reporters. However, it was not clear if the count of 80 included the contacts of these travellers.
588 report to officials overnight
The 110 persons were in the following districts — 28 in Coimbatore, 20 in Theni, 17 in Dindigul, nine in Madurai, seven each in Tirupattur and Chengalpattu, six in Tirunelveli, five in Sivaganga, two each in Kancheepuram, Tiruvarur, Erode and Thoothukudi and one each in Karur, Tiruvannamalai and Chennai. Till March 31, the Health department had tracked 515 persons, who had returned to various parts of the State after attending the conference.
Ms. Rajesh added that Tamil Nadu had not progressed to Stage-3 transmission as all these cases belonged to one particular group.
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“After we made a fervent appeal asking persons who had attended the conference to come forward and report to officials, this number has increased to 1,103 persons. We have admitted them to isolation wards in hospitals, and we have lifted samples from 658 of them so far. We will test samples from the remaining persons in the next 24 hours,” the Health Secretary said.
The department had earlier mentioned that 1,500 persons had travelled to Nizamuddin from TN and it was a “dynamic figure”. It appeared that around 300 to 400 persons are still in Delhi, and many of them have tested positive after laboratory testing. But the exact numbers were not clear, she said.
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She added that Tamil Nadu had not progressed to stage-3 transmission of COVID-19 as all these cases belonged to one particular group.
