Over 8,000 new cases in Tamil Nadu, deaths cross 13,000

Recoveries mounted to 896,759 on Friday with 4,920 patients being discharged, a bulletin said. There are 61,593 active cases in Tamil Nadu.

Tamil Nadu reported 8,449 new Covid-19 infections and 33 deaths on Friday, pushing the state’s caseload to 971,384 and death toll to 13,032, said the health department.

A health worker taking a swab sample from a shopkeeper for a RT-PCR Covid-19 test in Chennai.(Arun Sankar / AFP)

Recoveries mounted to 896,759 on Friday with 4,920 patients being discharged, a bulletin said. There are 61,593 active cases in Tamil Nadu.

Chennai continued to constitute the major chunk of the new cases, accounting for 2,636 new infections aggregating to 277,300. At 4,364, it leads in the number of fatalities too.

A total of 97,201 samples were tested on Friday, the bulletin said. As many as 30 people who arrived from various destinations, including the United Arab Emirates, were among those to test positive.

Of the 33 new deaths, four of them succumbed without any pre-existing illness, which included a 47-year-old man from Dharmapuri, the bulletin said.

The government said a private lab in Chennai was recently accorded approval to take up Covid-19 testing, taking the total number of facilities operating in the state to 263.