After a steep rise through the first two weeks of April, the number of new COVID-19 cases in Tamil Nadu has been coming down for the past three days. Highlighting this during his recent press meet on Thursday, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami said that this fall in numbers was promising. Chief Minister shared that the state has recorded 25 new COVID-19 cases on Thursday, making the new total 1267, and said, “Slowly it will start reducing. We have done extensive contact tracing and test everyone. In the next two to three days it will become zero.”
As of April 16, the state has recorded 15 deaths and 180 recoveries, 62 moving out from hospitals just on Thursday. Expressing his hope for containing the disease in the state, the Chief Minister later on added, “We will turn all positive cases into negative. The 180 (number of recoveries) will only keep increasing.”
Answering a question on relief being given by the state to those families who have lost their kin to novel coronavirus, Palaniswami claimed that this was a rich person’s disease and the disease has been imported to Tamil Nadu by those who travelled to other places.
“This is a rich person’s disease. They brought this home. Isn’t this a disease brought from foreign countries and other states? Poor people don’t have it. You can very well talk to them. One should get scared of the rich person only. Because they go abroad and import disease here. They have travelled to other states and now people here have got it. This is why Tamil Nadu has COVID-19 cases. Tamil Nadu did not create this pandemic,” he said.
Chief Minister shared data regarding the available number of testing kits in the state. “1,97,000 PCR kits are available with us. We have sufficient testing and protective kits. Should the number of cases increase in the state like it has in countries like the USA, Italy and Spain, we have placed orders for more PPE kits, ventilators, masks and the likes. Tamil Nadu is the only state in the country that has a strong precautionary plan in place,” he stated.
Of the total number of COVID-19 cases in the state, 13 frontline workers including government and private doctors, healthcare and sanitary workers have been infected. The state presently has 27 testing centres which includes 10 private testing centres. The testing capacity of all these centres put together is 5590 samples per day.
Talking about the measures taken to help farmers and migrant workers in the state, CM also shared updates on what’s being done for them. In view of Ramzan festival that will begin on April 23, CM shared that he will be holding talks with religious leaders on how to observe the festival month, especially the cooking and sharing of the nombu kanji (a rice gruel) that’s an integral part of the Ramzan month.