A total of 84 staff members working at the official residence of the Tamil Nadu Governor Banwarilal Purohit on Thursday tested positive for Covid-19, following which, the Raj Bhavan campus has been sanitised and disinfected.
According to a press statement issued by the Raj Bhavan, 147 persons living inside the premises were tested, out of which 84 staff members, including security persons and fire safety personnel, whose test results returned positive for Covid-19.
“As a few persons staying inside Raj Bhavan has shown symptoms, testing was done for 147 persons, out of which 84 persons, including security personnel and fire service personnel, were found positive for Covid-19,” said the press statement. All the infected people have been quarantined by the health department.
“All these persons were working outside of the Raj Bhavan, such as the main gate and not in the main building. None of these persons came in contact with the governor or senior officials of Raj Bhavan,” said the press communique.
Meanwhile on Thursday, Tamil Nadu reported the highest number of Covid-19 cases, touching an all-time high of 6,472 cases. As per the media bulletin released by the state health department, Tamil Nadu has 52,939 active cases. The total number of infected cases stand at 1,92,964 out of which 1,36,793 have recovered. Chennai, on Thursday, recorded 1,336 cases, having reported 1,171 on Wednesday.
Tamil Nadu has registered 3,232 deaths since the outbreak of the novel coronavirus. A total of 444 unaccounted deaths were added to the death register on Wednesday. These deaths, which were reported from March 1 to mid-July, were not accounted earlier and was added to the register following completion of reconciliation of deaths by the health department and greater Chennai Corporation. The death registry is maintained by the greater Chennai corporation.
On the other hand, as a measure to contain the spread of Covid-19, the Tamil Nadu government is all set to carry out pool testing of test samples in 21 districts that have positivity rates less than 5 per cent. The government on Wednesday had said that the pool testing method will increase the testing capacity to help in early detection of cases in the community and improve the turnaround time of the samples tested.
