Tamil Nadu on Friday added 261 new COVID-19 cases pushing the statewide tally to 34,50,594, while the death toll mounted to 38,011 with one more fatality in the last 24 hours, the health department said. The number of recoveries eclipsed new cases with 705 people getting discharged in the last 24 hours, aggregating to 34,09,078 leaving 3,505 active infections, a medical bulletin said.
Among the districts, Chennai recorded the most with 76 new cases followed by Coimbatore 37 and Chengalpet 31, while the remaining cases were spread across other districts. The state capital also leads in the overall cases with 7,50,283 infections. As many as 11 districts have reported zero new cases. A total of 51,284 samples were tested in the last 24 hours, pushing the cumulative number of specimens examined to 6,46,09,137.
Meanwhile, Minister for Health and Family Welfare Ma Subramanian said the total number of doses administered to people breached the 10 crore mark today after several states, including Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, West Bengal, among others. "We have administered over 10 crore doses today. It is a satisfying target. The vaccination exercise commenced on January 12, 2021 and till May 6, only 63.28 lakh people were administered the doses during the previous regime," he said.
To a query, he said 91.54 per cent of the total population were administered with the first dose while 72.62 per cent received both the doses, till date. For the vaccinations to those aged between 15-18 years against the targeted 33.46 lakh, he said 83.19 per cent of adolescents were administered with the first dose while 47.17 per cent received second dose. "On January 10, we commenced the precautionary booster dose exercise and till date we have inoculated 6.37 lakh people as against the targeted 8.45 lakh," he said. Subramanian said the 23rd Mega Vaccination Camp would be held through 50,000 camps across Tamil Nadu on Saturday and appealed those members of the public who are yet to receive the first dose or second dose or precautionary booster dose to make use of the opportunity.
With PTI Inputs
