Chennai reintroduces Covid control measures

Volunteers carrying thermal scanners and noting temperature as part of door-to-door surveillance, young men on motorbikes running errands for Covid-19 patients under home isolation are back in Chennai as part of efforts to tackle the second Covid-19 wave.

Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC) is re-implementing these measures that worked in containing the pandemic spread during the first wave last year as hospitals are running out of beds in the city, which has the highest caseload in Tamil Nadu. Last year, the measures were also implemented in other hotspots districts such as Madurai and Trichy.

Workers have been roped in for door-to-door enumeration and for Home Quarantine and Isolation Monitoring System (HQIMS). They worked for a fee of ₹500 daily from June to January. “As cases were low, GCC stopped our work but contacted us again in April with a surge in cases,” said L Sivalingadurai, a volunteer.

Sivalingadurai’s three friends have re-joined HQIMS, and he is thinking about following suit.

Over 12,000 volunteers visit households every day across the city to check for symptoms like fever, cough, loss of smell, etc. If they find symptomatic individuals, they are referred to fever clinics, where doctors ascertain if they have an influenza-like illness and collect samples. If they test positive, they are sent to screening centres. Twelve such screening centres were opened last week, where medical teams decide whether to keep patients under home quarantine, shift them to Covid care centres or to hospitals depending on their symptoms.

Since patients and their immediate family members under home quarantine cannot step out, FOCUS (Friend of Covid Person Under Surveillance) volunteers help them by buying groceries, medicines, and other essentials. “Besides helping them, this ensures that they also remain in quarantine,” said GCC’s deputy commissioner (health) Alby John. “We are repeating measures taken last year and the vaccination [drive] is [also] a shot in the arm for us as Chennai has vaccinated over 54% of the population above 45.”

The civic body also restarted tele-counselling facilities with 100 lines last week for patients under home quarantine.

Micro-containment of streets has also been reintroduced as 408 streets have six or more cases. “We have slightly changed the containment strategy wherein we are barricading a street if there are more than three cases..,” said John.

Chennai has no shortage of hospital beds, but they are fast filling up. At GCC-run Covid care centres for people with mild symptoms, there were 11,645 beds available. Only 1,487 of them were occupied. In Covid-19 hospitals, 3,002 out of 4,368 beds were occupied, according to government data.

Prabhdeep Kaur, deputy director, the National Institute of Epidemiology (Chennai), said the second wave is much more rapid as compared to the first in terms of the number of cases and the pace at which they are increasing. “[It] can overwhelm the health system and put pressure on healthcare workers. We need to add more beds and manpower and the public has to take this very seriously and go out for only essential work.”