Tamil Nadu extends Covid curbs till Oct-end; schools to reopen for classes 1-8

Social, political, cultural gatherings, festivals, the consecration of places of worship will continue to be prohibited.

Meanwhile, the state government has also said that physical classes for the students of classes 1 to 8 will resume from 1 November.

A decision to this effect was taken considering the views expressed by the health experts, educationists, and parents that the absence of formal schooling has caused huge loss of learning as well as depression among the school children, Stalin said in a statement. Regular classes for the students of 9 to 12 have been going on.

CM Stalin has urged people to be cautious during the ensuing festival season and to avoid visiting crowded places to prevent a third wave of Covid-19. All commercial establishments should adhere to the guidelines issued by the state government.

Meanwhile, Tamil Nadu today clocked 1,630 new Covid-19 infections, including a returnee from Karnataka, pushing the caseload to 26,60,553, the health department said.

With 17 people succumbing to the virus, the death toll has risen to 35,526, according to a medical bulletin.

Recoveries marginally outnumbered new cases with 1,643 people getting discharged in the last 24 hours, aggregating to 26,07,796 leaving 17,231 active infections.

As many as 1,50,725 samples were tested in a span of 24 hours, pushing the cumulative number of specimens examined to 4,66,88,837.

Four districts accounted for a majority of new infections with Chennai adding 184 cases, Coimbatore 183, Erode 121, Chengalpet 117, while the remaining was scattered across other districts.

Five districts reported new cases below double digits, while there were no fresh deaths in 27 districts. Meanwhile, Minister for Medical and Family Welfare Ma Subramanian said the government would hold the fourth edition of the Mega Vaccination Camp through 50,000 vaccination camps on October 10.

Talking to reporters, Subramanian said the three mega vaccination camps conducted by the government surpassed the projected number of vaccinations.

“Today we received 9 lakh vaccines and vaccines are being administered to people as vaccination camps were not held yesterday,” he said.

Based on the orders of CM Stalin, local administration staff would be involved in conducting ‘gram sabha’ meetings on October 2 and so the mega vaccination camp would not be held on that day, he said.

“We will hold the fourth Mega Vaccination Camp on October 10 through 50,000 camps across the State.”

On the proposal to set up government medical colleges in 11 districts, he said the Centre after reviewing the status of the projects, gave its consent to admit 850 students to the proposed colleges in Namakkal, Tiruppur, Ramanathapuram, Thiruvallur.

For the remaining colleges, minor works are going on and once they get completed the government would approach the Centre to give its approval to admit 1,650 students in all the 11 government run medical colleges, the minister added.