Seventy-nine new cases of coronavirus were detected on Tuesday in the cluster of the Indian Institute of Technology-Madras, taking the tally to 183.

On Monday, 104 cases tested positives for the virus.

“Out of the 978 samples from the IIT-M cluster collected since December 1, a total of 183 people have tested positive till date, and results for 25 specimens alone were yet to be received”, Tamil Nadu Health Secretary, J Radhakrishnan said.

For testing, as many as 539 samples were taken on Monday alone which includes workers in addition to students, and from this batch, 79 tested positive, he said.

The overall positivity rate vis-a-vis the institution has however gone down to 15 percent from about 20 percent seen earlier, he was quoted saying to PTI.