Tamil Nadu surpasses Delhi to occupy second position in coronavirus cases

With close to 4,000 fresh cases in a day, Tamil Nadu has overtaken Delhi to become the second most coronavirus affected state in India after Maharashtra. While Tamil Nadu now has 90,167 cases, the Union Territory of Delhi has 87,360 confirmed positive cases.

However, Delhi has some encouraging news as it has for the past seven days shown a decline in fresh cases. Delhi’s recovery rate is 66.03 per cent, which is much higher than the national average of 59.07 per cent.

Economist Shamika Ravi, who is constantly tracking the Covid graph, said Delhi seems to have peaked with successive days of declining daily cases. She said another week will confirm this, but Delhi is showing a “reversal of trend”, with increased testing over the last few days.With some positive indicators, Delhi may soon be on road to normality.

Meanwhile, India registered the highest single-day COVID-19 deaths at 507 on Wednesday with Maharashtra, Delhi and Tamil Nadu accounting for over 70 per cent of the fatalities, while 18,653 new infections were reported taking the total tally to 5,85,493.

For the fifth consecutive day, coronavirus infections have increased by more than 18,000. The country has seen a surge of 3,94,958 infections from June 1 till date.

The number of active cases stands at 2,20,114, while 3,47,978 people have recovered, which translates to around 59.43 per cent of patients having recovered so far.

Of the 507 deaths reported in the last 24 hours, 245 are from Maharashtra, 62 from Delhi and 60 are from Tamil Nadu. Moreover, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal began emerging as new hotspots.

Some parallel developments

India’s first COVID-19 vaccine candidate Covaxin has got approval for human trials. It has been jointly developed by ICMR, NIV (Pune) and Bharat Biotech.

The Tamil Nadu government has also issued a Standard Operating Procedure for places of worship in rural areas, outlining norms to prevent the spread of
coronavirus.

It includes prohibition for "physical offerings like prasad, distribution or sprinkling of holy water to be allowed inside the religious place."

Offerings such as coconut, fruits and flowers shall not be allowed. During poojas and abishekam, the public must not be allowed to sit inside and witness the event, the SOP said.

In view of the potential health issues, "devotees may be discouraged to do prostration /angapradhatchanam till normalcy returns."