Chennai, Jul 13 (PTI) Tamil Nadu's COVID-19 death toll crossed the grim milestone of 2,000 with 66 more fatalities while the tally inched towards 1.50 lakh with 4,328 fresh cases on Monday.

Significantly, the number of samples tested crossed 16.50 lakh with 44,560 specimens being examined on Monday, a health department bulletin said.

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The toll mounted to 2,032 with the fresh fatalities which included two men in their 30s. As many as 59 of those who succumbed to the deadly virus had comorbidities.

The state's virus tally stood at 1,42,798 and Chennai accounted for 78,573, nearby Chengelpet 8,283 and Tiruvallur 6,930 and the temple town of Madurai came next with 6,539 cases.

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If the current trend of a daily count of 4,000 plus cases continued, the infection count would breach the 1.50 lakh mark in the next couple of days. Cumulatively, 16,54,008 samples have been tested and according to the government, Tamil Nadu has done the highest confirmatory RT-PCR COVID testing. Of the 4,328 new cases, Chennai's share continued to be relatively low with 1,140 and the remainder was spread across the state.

In a trend reversal, Chennai was accounting for nearly three fourths of the total cases till last month and now, it is the rest of Tamil Nadu which shared the lion's share of new cases. On the positive side, a total of 92,567 people have got cured till date and on Monday 3,035 patients recovered, leaving the active cases at 48,196. In the state capital, which witnessed an intense lockdown between June 19 and July 5, fresh cases, which stood at 2,082 on July 3, went below the 2,000 mark from the next day. Gradually, it slid below 1,500 and from July 7 to 10, it was 1,200 plus.

From July 11, less than 1,200 cases are getting added daily. From a single lab of the State-run King Institute of Preventive Medicine here in February, Tamil Nadu today has 105 labs, including 52 in the private sector.

(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)