Coronavirus crisis: How COVID-19 cases in Tamil Nadu are causing panic among people

New Delhi, May 06: In recent days, it seems Tamil Nadu is adding its coronavirus numbers at a very fast pace. The numbers have nearly doubled in the last one week, from 2,058 to 4,058. Tamil Nadu reported over 500 new cases on each of the last two days and was the single biggest contributor to the national numbers after Maharashtra.

Unlike states such as Punjab or West Bengal, where the sudden surge in the numbers in recent days could be attributed to specific reasons, it is not clear what is causing the rise in numbers in the southern state.

However, the number of new cases were increasing at a much more modest rate in Tamil Nadu earlier. Its previous doubling had taken 17 days.

On May 5, India added 2,949 new coronavirus cases, and is now within touching distance of reaching 50,000-mark. The number stood at 49,339, out of which at least 12,750 had already recovered from the disease.

Within the first five days of this month, India has identified more than 15,000 cases, which is threatening to reverse gains made in limiting the spread of the disease in April. This surge has nothing to do with the relaxation in lockdown restrictions that have been given since May 4.

It is reportedly said that the trend has originated before the relaxations came into effect, and in any case, the impact of the relaxation would become evident only after a lag of about a week or ten days.

The present surge that can be seen is spontaneous, and an indicator of the fact that the second half of the earlier lockdown phase was not as effective in restricting the spread of the disease as it took place in the first half.

Meanwhile, Gujarat crossed the 6,000-mark on Tuesday, as Delhi reached 5,000 and Madhya Pradesh 3,000. Gujarat reported 49 deaths, the most that any state has done on any single day till now. It can be seen that 39 of those deaths happened in Ahmedabad. This too is the highest single-day number for any city.

As the number of deaths is crossing 350 in Gujarat, the state restricted the information it was giving out about its dead till now in the daily bulletins.