Tamil Nadu makes masks mandatory again, Rs 500 penalty for non-compliance

39 test positive during past 24 hours, total active cases at 256, with 30 at IIT Madras campus

The government of Tamil Nadu has asked all its hospitals to be on standby following the rising number of cases and also made wearing facemasks in public mandatory. Those who are not wearing a facemask in public will have to pay a penalty of Rs 500.

Based on state government data, some 39 people tested positive during the past 24 hours while total active cases stood at 256. Eighteen more IIT Madras students were discovered to have been infected on Friday, taking the total number of cases at the institute to 30. State health secretary J Radhakrishnan visited the campus on Friday to oversee RT-PCR tests being conducted at the campus. He termed the spread on campus as a small cluster.  

A total of 665 samples were tested on the campus.  With a lot of people yet to take even the first dose, the state government is organising a mega vaccination camp at 100,000 locations across the state on May 8. In the last 24 hours, India saw as many as 2,451 new cases and 54 deaths, based on data shared by the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.