He said the death rate in the State continued to be 1.1% and said 365 people have been discharged from hospitals. On Saturday alone, he said 82 people had been discharged.
He reiterated that the government was looking at aggressive testing and that the arrival of the rapid test kits would help to intensify this.
The first consignment of 24,000 rapid test kits reached the State on Friday and were dispatched to various part of Tamil Nadu. Meanwhile, 12,000 more rapid test kits arrived on Saturday taking the total number of kits in the State to 36,000 as against the 50,000 that the State had asked for.
There was no mention in the media bulletin whether the cases reported on Saturday were related to the ‘single source event’ which is being widely understood to be referring to cases stemming from the Tablighi Jamaat conference held in Delhi in March. Last week, the State government began using the term ‘single source’ in their bulletins last Monday to prevent the pandemic from taking on a communal colour.
Chennai continues to be the worst affected district with 235 cases, followed by 128 cases in Coimbatore. On Saturday, the highest number of cases were reported in were from Tirupur with 28 cases.
In all, 23,702 people are under home quarantine, 34 in government quarantine facilities and 1,884 people under isolation at hospitals across the state. The government also said as many as 29,997 persons have been tested till date and 35,036 have been tested so far. A total of 5,363 samples were tested on Saturday alone, the media bulletin confirmed.
