TN becomes 2nd state to cross 100,000 mark

AGGRESSIVE TESTING 1.27 million tested in the state, highest in India by absolute numbers

THE CIVIC BODY CAME UP WITH A NEW STRATEGY PEGGED ON HOME QUARANTINING EVEN THOSE WHO WERE LIKELY TO BE INFECTED TO PREVENT SPREAD.

CHENNAI: Tamil Nadu on Friday became the second state in India to cross the grim milestone of a million cases, with a total of 102,721 people infected with Covid-19 disease in the state where five districts, including Chennai, are under an intense lockdown to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

However its high case load must be seen in relation to another important figure: its testing numbers. As of Friday, a total of 1.27 million people have been tested in 91 testing facilities, which is the highest in the country in absolute numbers. Between June 19 and June 30, when the state announced a hard lockdown in Chennai, Kancheepuram, Thiruvallur, and Chengalpattu (Madurai was put under lockdown on June 23, and it was extended to July 5), 327,214 people were tested across the state. Since June 20, there has been a spike in testing, with over 30,000 people tested everyday on average.

Health department officials say that high caseload shouldn’t scare people as it is a result of Tamil Nadu’s strategy of “aggressive and increased testing” and that the state’s focus is to reduce its fatalities.it has a fatality rate of 1.3%, which is low when compared to the national average of 2.9%. Experts said the high numbers can be attributed to the movement of people across the state post Unlock 1.

“We have a free hand in high testing which we will continue and allow cases to come down organically,” TN health secretary J Radhakrishnan told HT.

The state government initially announced a 12-day lockdown in Chennai and three of its adjoining districts from June 19 allowing people to commute for only medical emergencies, airports, train stations and walk for essentials like groceries. On Monday, Tamil

Nadu extended the lockdown as officials found that even symptomatic people were avoiding getting tested because they didn’t want to be in quarantine. Besides this, people were also not following norms of social distancing or wearing masks while in public. “Because of less movement we are able to identify people and test the same day,” Radhakrishnan said.

Experts agree that Tamil Nadu was able to scale up testing – it had started sending samples to the National Institute of Virology in Pune in March itself -- owing to a robust public health infrastructure that had been in the making since the AIDS epidemic, and the H1N1 outbreak in 2010, when Reverse Transcription-polymerase Chain Reaction testing facilities, used to test Covid-19 samples, came up.

Chennai with 64,689 cases accounting for 62.9% of the case load in the state had scaled up testing to 10,000 per day during the most recent lockdown.

Though the health department hasn’t shared district-wise testing data, officials said Chennai was testing in the range of 3,000 to 5,000 people per day.

The Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC) increased fever camps from 300 in May to 520 camps currently across Chennai’s 200 wards. Between May 8 and July 2, a total of 29, 051 swabs haven taken at these fever camps and 33,090 people with detected with influenza like illness (ILI) symptoms. In June, the GCC also recruited over 4000 volunteers, called Friend of Covid Person Under Surveillance (FOCUS), to assist the network of health workers. These volunteers are paid ~500 a day.

The civic body came up with a new strategy pegged on home quarantining even those who were likely to be infected to prevent the spread. Called the home quarantine and isolation monitoring system (HQIMS), it focused on 18 categories of people. “The concept of home quarantine for treatment progressed at a later stage,” GCC deputy commissioner for revenue and finance, Meghanathan Reddy who is overseeing this project, said.

“We are in a better position now in terms of testing and surveillance compared to April... When we open up again transmission will increase which we can manage through mask compliance and continue surveillance, testing and isolation,” a member of the expert panel of the government said on condition of anonymity.