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Tamil Nadu vegetable market cluster pushes state’s Covid-19 tally past 10k
According to a state government official, around 4,000 people linked to the market have already been tested out of which 1,000 are primary contacts.
As Tamil Nadu crossed 10,000 cases on Friday — the first case, a 45-year-old man with a travel history to Oman, was detected in early March — a wholesale market of fresh fruit, vegetables and flowers in Chennai became the latest warzone for the administration battling the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.
According to a state government official, around 4,000 people linked to the market have already been tested out of which 1,000 are primary contacts. At least 2,500 positive cases currently pertain to the Koyambedu Market cluster, which is higher than the 1350 cases in the state linked to the Tablighi Jamaat religious conference.
The Koyambedu hotspot is also responsible for cases in 10 districts other than Chennai. “We have either carried out facility quarantine or home quarantine of those who started the journey from Koyambedu,” the official quoted above said.
Spread over 54 acres, Koyambedu market complex is one of the largest wholesale market complexes for perishable goods in India. It houses more than 1000 wholesalers and over 2000 retail shops. On May 4, 300 of the 527 new cases reported were found to be linked to the market. Within hours, it was shut down.
According to S Ram Mohan, a core committee member of the Joint Action Committee of vegetable vendors’ associations at Koyambedu market, the district administration had shut down flower and fruit sales well before May 4. By then, even the vegetable retailers had stopped operations.
On April 28, retail traders and fruit sellers from Koyambedu were relocated to a suburb. Expecting wholesalers to do likewise would have been difficult as few open spaces in the city have the capacity to handle 3,000 tonnes of vegetables each day, GD Rajasekaran, president, Koyambedu Periyar Market Association, said.
On April 24, the state government announced a hard lockdown for four days, between April 26 and 29. This led to a spate in panic buying. Mohan recounted scenes of utter chaos in Koyambedu in the two days before the hard lockdown was enforced. On April 30, another round of panic buying ensued after people realized that the second leg of the national lockdown, which was expected to end on May 3, would likely be extended.
Last week, chief minister Edappadi Palaniswami blamed the traders for not vacating the market in March itself. “Now, because many from Koyambedu had travelled to other districts, the number of infected there has gone up. This is the reason for the spike in cases in Chennai also,” he said. However, Mohan countered this and said that no official meeting was held between the wholesale vendors and the authorities in March or April.
Super-spreading events have played a much bigger role in the virus spread in Tamil Nadu than in Maharashtra and Gujarat — two other states that have seen huge numbers of Covid-19 cases, experts said.
The spike in numbers due to the Koyambedu cluster is immediately noticeable. Between April 24 and May 3, the average daily new cases reported in Tamil Nadu were 134; from May 4 to May 13, the average grew to 620 a day. Persons linked to the market have spread the virus the neighbouring states of Kerala and Andhra Pradesh.
T Jacob John, a former professor of Virology, Christian Medical College (CMC), Vellore blamed ad-hoc decisions and panic among people because of the total lockdown. To contain the disease, all people must wear masks outside their home and maintain hand hygiene, he said.
The good news is that the state is testing much more than it was even last month. The state had conducted the highest total number of tests as per the HT dashboard at 280,023 as of Thursday night, which translates into 4179 tests per million people, far higher than the national average of 1540 per million people.
“The more you test, the more you find. Tamil Nadu is finding more cases because they are testing more,” said Dr V Ramana Dhara, professor at Indian Institute of Public Health-Hyderabad. “These cases are probably occurring in other states too, but they are not testing more,” he added.
“The increase in number of cases is something to be expected especially as the most stringent components of the lockdown are relaxed. We are seeing the residual of a couple of major clusters, for instance, the Koyambedu cluster,” Dr Ram Gopalakrishnan, an infectious disease specialist said.
