‘Superspreader events remain major challenge’

How did Tamil Nadu fare in coping with COVID-19 in the first year of the pandemic? According to Health Secretary J Radhakrishnan and top officials at the Directorate of Public Health, the virus has brought about several infrastructural developments and changes in the public and private sector. They recall the efforts taken by the State health department to counter the pandemic and discuss the challenges ahead.

After the COVID-19 infection was noted as a public health emergency, the Revenue and Disaster Management department declared it as a notified emergency within a few weeks. Starting with testing of samples at the National Institute of Virology, Pune, Tamil Nadu currently has a total of 257 laboratories including 69 government laboratories for testing.

Radhakrishnan said the State health department started with 10 COVID-19 isolation beds at Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital and currently there are thousands of beds and hospitals available for the treatment.

“The major development is of the upscaling of infrastructure in the public sector and ramping up of the healthcare facilities. We increased the oxygen beds in the hospitals and spiked it from 350kl to 784kl of oxygen. The need for ventilators and oximeters was also emphasized, increasing the pace of procurement of the ventilators, beds, medications and others,” said Radhakrishnan.

While lockdown was a challenge for the public, health officials could use that opportunity to ramp up the healthcare facilities. Several incomplete construction sites in healthcare establishments were converted as dedicated COVID-19 centres, such as the Institute of Ageing in Guindy and Tower 3 of Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital.

Lockdown also brought door-to-door volunteer survey and later oximeter check-ups as a lot of people feared travelling to the healthcare facilities. “The fever camps and volunteer survey was to reach out to every individual, in Chennai as the city had a surge in the cases during April and May. However, our strength lies in compulsory RT-PCR tests that ensure intensified testing, irrespective of the number of cases of COVID-19 in the State,” said the health secretary.

COVID-19 being a new virus, the healthcare authorities throughout the world were uncertain of a specific clinical protocol to eliminate it. However, state health officials noted there were no major changes in the treatment procedures that helped in the consistency of the COVID-19 treatment protocol.

Tamil Nadu health department had the major challenge of superspreader events that led to major clusters in colleges, hotels, markets and other public places. “After handling the superspreader events and cluster cases through intensified testing, we are recently witnessing a challenge of clusters in families, with more than 200 clusters of them testing about 400 people positive for COVID-19,” said J Radhakrishnan.

He added that vaccination and relaxations have brought relief to the department and also the people. However, negligence on the part of the public can be a problem and hence the safety measures should not be neglected. Radhakrishnan also stressed the importance of environmental factors, human health and zoonotic diseases to prevent such outbreaks in future.

AFTER HANDLING SUPERSPREADER EVENTS & CLUSTER CASES THROUGH INTENSIFIED TESTING, WE ARE WITNESSING A CHALLENGE OF CLUSTERS IN FAMILIES

J Radhakrishnan, Health Secretary