Tamil Nadu Health Minister Ma Subramanian on Wednesday attributed the mushrooming of COVID-19 clusters in the state and spike in cases in the city to students coming from other states, particularly North.
Nearly 91 per cent of the students have tested positive for the highly transmissible Omicron BA.2 variant, yet the situation is under control, as precautionary measures were put in place, he said.
The minister was trolled for his remark that the students from the North were spreading the contagion.
Twitteratis reacted sharply, taking exception to the remark.
"Tamil Nadu ministers 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.
Uttar Pradesh minister (BJP) Jitin Prasada slammed the health minister, saying "Disease and pandemics do not know any state boundaries or borders as we all have 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 number of coronavirus cases, certain states like New Delhi, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and neighbouring Kerala have not ensured that.
"The cases spread to other students from the hostellers who come from those states. But, coronavirus cases have remained below 100 for the last 3 months in Tamil Nadu with no fatalities due to COVID-19," Subramanian said.
Due to testing and precautionary measures, the cases in IIT-Madras touched 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 campus at 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 in Chennai.
There were about 5,600 students in their first year in VIT, Kelambakkam, staying in the hostel and nearly 80 per cent of them are from North.
They returned from their home-States on May 12 and 13, he said and added that 91 per cent of the students who tested positive were infected with the BA.2 variant.
Kerala and Maharashtra have been reporting over 500 to 1,000 cases in the last 24 hours, he said.
"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 get the dose," the minister said.
