chennai active cases in tamil nadu on monday touched 5149 crossing the 5000mark after nearly 51 days while 836 fresh cases were reported across the state highest in 67 days in the worsthit chennai the count crossed 300mark for the first time this year to touch to 317 the citys active case count stood at 2023 on mondayon january 23 active cases in the state dropped to 4984 cases for the first time since may 10 2020 cases continued to fall until the second week of february when reports about fresh clusters started emerging almost every day from chennai chengalpet kancheepuram tiruvallur coimbatore tirupur and thanjavur districtscivic agencies told to intensify containmenthealth secretary j radhakrishnan said as cases came down and vaccines were made available people dropped their guard mask compliance became poor and social distancing norms were violated in private and public gatheringshealth department officials intensified surveillance contract tracing testing and early isolation helped prevent deaths but without social distancing and masks the transmission rates continued to go up on an average the state is now testing 65000 people including around 12000 in chennai according to the directorate of public health with increase in testing cases have been going up we have asked doctors not to allow home quarantine unless they are sure patients are young healthy and will be able to adhere to stringent norms also we have asked all civic agencies including greater chennai corporation to intensify containment measures said director of public health dr t s selvavinayagamin the first 15 days of january chennai reported 3232 fresh cases of covid19 the cases were steadily dropping and in the first15 days of february the city had 2186 new cases but over the last15 days the city has reported 3232 cases the city last reported more than 300 cases on december 23 2020 epidemiologist says all indicators positivity rate number of cases doubling time for infection hospital occupancyindicate a rising infection rate in chennaisimilar to the situation in may 2020 spike in cases in chennai seem to have a cascading effect on the neighbouring districts of chengalpet tiruvallur and kancheepuram after chennai the highest number of cases in the state was from chengalpet which reported 81 new cases tiruvallur reported 44 new cases and kancheepuram reported 22 with 70 cases coimbatore had the third highest number of fresh cases on monday followed by thanjavur 58 tiruppur recorded 29 new cases while all the districts reported fresh cases 23 of them reported new cases in single digitsof the four deaths reported on monday there was one each from chennai coimbatore madurai and nagapattinam as of now we do not know if more cases mean more deaths said infectious diseases expert dr subramanian swaminathan deaths are a reflection of cases we saw 10 or 15 days ago but what we do know is that along with cases in the wards more people including those in their early 40s are being moved into the icus he saidthere is