16,000 workers deployed in Chennai to screen residents for COVID-19
In a fresh attempt to curb the spread of coronavirus in the state, the Tamil Nadu government will send 16,000 trained workers to screen people across Chennai on a door-to-door basis from Sunday (April 5).
In a fresh attempt to curb the spread of coronavirus in the state, the Tamil Nadu government will send 16,000 trained workers to screen people across Chennai on a door-to-door basis from Sunday (April 5).
In a first for the country, this one of a kind attempt aims to monitor residents in about 10 lakh buildings over a span of 90 days.
The deployed trained workers will be wearing personal protective equipment and will submit daily reports of a round the clock 24×7 monitoring of residents of the capital city.
The move comes in the backdrop of two more deaths and two more COVID-19 cases being reported in Chennai on Saturday (April 4), taking the toll in the state to five persons and the positive cases in the capital to 88.
Cases in the city rose after several people who attended the religious congregation hosted by Tablighi Jamaat in Delhi last month came back to Chennai and started testing positive for coronavirus. The two new cases on Saturday were also of the attendees.
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However, some of the residents are unhappy with the state government’s move.
“What we are creating is a potential wave of carriers going from home to home and spreading the virus. I’m not at all comfortable with my elderly parents receiving unknown people into their home who have been in touch with other potentially infected people,” John Dulip, a Hong Kong based Executive who’s elderly parents are in Chennai told NDTV.
With 85 more people, who participated in the Nizamuddin markaz event, testing COVID-19 positive on Sunday, the overall confirmed cases of the state climbed up to 571, second to Maharashtra’s 635.
“437 of them are Delhi attendees. Out of the 1,500 attendees, all 1,200 attendees have been tested and put on hospital isolation across the state,” said Health Secretary Dr Beela Rajesh said on Saturday.
The state government is in for some challenge after the Centre directed them to start contact tracing of all the attendees who have tested positive.
According to a report in NDTV, around 5,000 health officials have started door-to-door screening of all houses in a 5-km radius around the house of every positive patient and those with symptoms are either put on home quarantine or hospital isolation followed by tests.
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Meanwhile, the bigger challenge is to trace the contacts of all 1,200 attendees who are likely to have got infected.
To date, out of the 7 crore population in Tamil Nadu, only 4,248 samples have been tested, mostly of patients with travel history and contacts of active cases. Another 90,541 persons are under home quarantine and 1,681 are in hospital isolation.
Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami has urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to provide sufficient test kits, ventilators, masks and an assistance of ₹9,000 crore to battle the pandemic as rising cases grip the society and increase the fear of community spread, demanding more tests to be done.
Following the new set of guidelines issued by the state government, now shops and businesses will have to function for 90 minutes than in the time slot allotted to them.
The chief minister also urged the several religious leaders to avoid painting coronavirus with communal colour and spreading hate for those patients who are positive.