'Spike in Tamil Nadu COVID-19 cases due to students from other states'; nearly 91% test positive

Chennai: Tamil Nadu Health Minister Ma Subramanian on Wednesday attributed the sudden mushrooming of COVID-19 clusters and spike in the infection in the city, as well, to the students coming from other states, particularly north India, but asserted that the situation is not alarming.

Nearly 91 percent of the students have tested positive for the highly transmissible Omicron BA.2 variant and the situation is under control, as precautionary measures were put in place, he said. The Minister was heavily trolled for his remark accusing the north Indian students of spreading the contagion.

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Twitteratis reacted sharply taking exception to Subramanian's remark. "Ministers from our state in DMK government compete among themselves on a daily basis to show, 'who has got lesser brains among them.' Sadly they are letting Tamil people down by their idiocy!" BJP state chief K Annamalai tweeted.

BJP Minister from Uttar Pradesh Jitin Prasada slammed the Health Minister saying "Disease and pandemics do not know any state boundaries or borders as we have all experienced. This is an extremely irresponsible and derogatory statement by the Heath minister of TN, insulting North Indians."

Subramanian however maintained that while the state government ensured prompt and appropriate steps to lower the Coronavirus cases, certain states like New Delhi, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and neighbouring Kerala have been witnessing an increase in the infection.

"The cases spread to other students from the hostelers who come from those states seeing increase in the infections. But the Coronavirus cases have remained below 100 since the last 3 months in Tamil Nadu with no fatalities due to COVID-19," Subramanian said.

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IIT Madras Covid-19 cases

Due to testing and precautionary measures the cases in IIT Madras cluster which touched to 237 and Sathya Sai college that saw 74 infections, got reduced to nil cases at present, he said.

"Anna University accounts for 23 cases now. VIT college in Kelambakkam has 163 confirmed cases from out of 4,192 screened through RT-PCR. The count is likely to go up in VIT as we have subjected the remaining 1,500 students to RT-PCR test," the Minister told reporters here.

There were about 5,600 students in the first year in VIT, Kelambakkam, staying in hostel and nearly 80 percent of them are from north India. They returned from their home states on May 12 and 13, the Minister said and added that 91 percent of the students who tested positive were infected with the BA.2 variant. States like Kerala and Maharashtra have been reporting over 500 to 1,000 cases in the last 24 hours.

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"I appeal to the people in Tamil Nadu to take adequate precaution. Those unvaccinated till now should take advantage of the camp to be held in one lakh places throughout the state and avail the dose," the Minister said.