Chennai, Dec 2 (PTI) Tamil Nadu clocked 715 fresh COVID-19 infections on Thursday, pushing the total case count to 27.28 lakh while the toll rose to 36,504 with 12 more deaths.

Recoveries outnumbered new infections with 748 people getting discharged in the last 24 hours, aggregating to 26,83,691, leaving 8,155 active infections, a medical bulletin said.

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A total of 1,01,818 samples were tested in the last 24 hours, pushing the cumulative number of specimens examined to 5.44 crore.

Chennai and Coimbatore continued to witness a rise in new infections by adding 123 and 121 cases, respectively, while the remaining was spread across other districts.

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Over the last few days, Chennai and Coimbatore have been recording a marginal increase in the number of new cases. As many as 23 districts reported less than 10 new infections, while Tenkasi recorded the least with zero new cases, the bulletin said.

Earlier in the day, Minister for Medical and Family Welfare Ma Subramanian along with senior officials inspected the safety measures taken at four international airports in the state as the threat for new virus Omicron looms large.

The health department has already appointed nodal officers to each of the international airports in Chennai, Coimbatore, Madurai and Tiruchirappalli to monitor the situation as passengers arrive from various countries including from 'high risk' and 'non-risk' countries.

A standard operating procedure has been laid out at the airports to be followed by the authorities which include thermal screening of the passenger, subjecting passengers to RTPCR tests, among many others.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)