<span style="color: #222222;">In Chennai, the city civic body has begun distributing fifty lakh free masks to all living in dense pockets to ensure safety protocols.<br />''<br />'' Every person in the crowded regions will be given two reusable masks each to prevent the regions from serving as the Covid-19 hotspots. Immunity boosting Sidhdha formulations are also being given to people in select pockets for ten days continuously where the disease prevalence is high.<br />''<br />''Meanwhile, in Tamil Nadu, the total number of Covid-19 infected cases has crossed the ten thousand mark with 434 people confirmed with the infection yesterday. They include 43 passengers who came from other states and six from the Maldives. However, 359 people were discharged yesterday leaving 7435 as the active caseload. Coimbatore, Tiruppur, Erode, Salem and Namakkal have zero-caseload as all the patients have been discharged.<br />''In another development, all Government offices will start functioning from tomorrow with fifty per cent staff in the state.<br />''<br />''Tamil Nadu Government has issued orders that all its offices would function from tomorrow for six days a week including Saturdays. All Group 'A' officials have to attend office every day. Group 'B' and 'C' staff will be segregated into two groups and they need to come to office in rotation. The attendance plan is devised in such a way that each group comes to office for two continuous days followed by two days of break during which time the other group will attend the office. They are asked to work from home while not coming to the office. This is to help maintain social distancing and to keep the attendance in office at about 50 per cent of the total strength. The staff have been assured of transport arrangements. It is clarified that the other offices dealing with essential services like health, police, district administrations, treasuries and local bodies will follow the already existing practice.</span><br />