Tamil Nadu's Covid-19 count crosses 17,000-mark after record spike in cases

• State's virus-related death toll reaches 118
• 87 of the 805 new patients are passengers from Maharashtra who returned to the southern state

Tamil Nadu's coronavius case count reached 17,082 on Monday after the state reported highest single-day jump in cases with 805 new cases getting reported in the last 24 hours.

The state's death toll rose to 118 after seven more deaths were reported in the southern state in the last 24 hours. There are 8,230 active cases in the state.

87 of the 805 new patients are passengers from Maharashtra who returned to the southern state.

The state's health department said that till date over 4 lakh people have been tested for the virus.

There are 68 functioning Covid-19 testing facilities in the state at the moment.

With 407 people getting discharged in the last 24 hours, the number of recoveries in the state stand at 8,731.

A Delhi-bound Indigo Airlines with 116 passengers was the first flight to be operated from the Chennai airport on Monday when the country resumed domestic air services after two months of Covid-19 lockdown, officials said.

It left for the national capital at 6.40 am while a flight from Delhi operated by the same carrier was the first incoming one, albeit with a far lesser number of passengers, at 27.

While a total of 34 flights were originally scheduled to depart, as many as 15 of them were cancelled, including some of those headed for Kolkata, Mumbai and Delhi.

A total of 16 flights were scheduled to arrive in the city through the day, according to the Centre's decision as Tamil Nadu government had demanded capping such services to 25 per day, while 19 outbound services were scheduled from the city, they said.

The cities covered by arrival and departure flights include Delhi, Mumbai, Coimbatore, Madurai and Port Blair.

All health protocols, including thermal screening of the passengers, were being followed by officials for both the arriving as well as departing air passengers.

Union Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri had last week announced resumption of domestic flight services from Monday onwards in a calibrated manner.

On Sunday, he had said the Chennai airport will have a maximum of 25 arrivals but that there was no cap on departing flights. For other airports in Tamil Nadu flights will operate as in other parts of the country, he had said.

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