TN first state to test 10 mn — all RT-PCR
Every morning at 8, Sugitha Munuswamy, 30, a Covid-19 sample collector walks from her home in Kannagi Nagar (a resettlement slum colony in Chennai) to the primary healthcare centre, where she puts on a white PPE, wears double gloves, two masks and a scrub cap; picks up testing kits and climbs into an ambulance, doubling as a sample collection vehicle. For the next eight hours, she goes around Sholinganallur zone in Chennai to draw nasal and throat swabs.
Sugitha’s mother wants her to quit fearing the deadly virus. “My mother asks me everyday how many samples I had collected,” Sugitha said. “I always underplay it.”
The 100-odd sample she collects is a small fraction in Tamil Nadu’s high testing numbers. On November 5, Tamil Nadu tested a total of 10 million people (10,052,393) in the state with more reliable RT PCR test, the only state in India to have done so till date.
On November 1, it crossed the 10-million mark of the number of persons tested.
Uttar Pradesh has the highest testing count in India at 15.4 million, but only 5.8 million of these tests are of RT-PCR and about 8.8 million are of the less accurate rapid antigen tests.
Tamil Nadu has 736,777 cases which is the fourth highest in India. In July, the average daily cases peaked, but since October there is a downward trend in new positive cases. Tamil Nadu was able to achieve the fete because of better RT-PCR facilities and patient tracking system because of its past efforts in AIDS and H1N1 control. For Covid-19, the state health department just added surveillance and testing to the existing system. One such measure was roping in laboratory technicians, like Sugitha who is trained to collect oral swabs to test for tuberculosis(TB). Sugitha joined the corporation in December 2019 under the National TB Elimination Project. She was brought into the Covid-19 workforce in April.
The network is brought together like a well-oiled machine by door-to-door enumeration, fever camps and home quarantine and isolation monitoring system (HQIMS). “The state provided 100-crore for strengthening our home surveys and HQIMS,” said Greater Chennai Municipal Corporation commissioner G Prakash.
Covid detection starts with the fever surveyors like J Sivalingadurai (the corporation’s paid volunteer since April 16)
going door-to-door. Each surveyor is assigned 150 homes. Sivalingadurai’s assigned families are in a posh multi-storey apartment on Old Mahabalipuram Road in south Chennai, where techies from across India and abroad live. He visits each home daily and asks the same set of questions: “How are you feeling today? Do you have a fever? Can you smell?”
Fever camps became a crucial link in virus control measures. So far, 3,378,398 people have attended the camps in Chennai with 15% positive rate. The fever camps have been increased to 550 in Chennai from 300 in May.
As the cases have increased, testing at labs has risen by almost 20 times. At a Chennai private lab, the lead microbiologist, who did not wish to be named, started by testing 50 samples a day in mid-April which increased to 800 in July and now she tests around a 1,000 samples. If the report is positive, a sanitary inspector visits the patient’s home to certify if they have a separate room and toilet for home quarantine. The SI also starts contact tracing to isolate potential virus carriers. “Because of these structural methods, there has been no outbreak or spurt in Chennai in the recent months,” said civic chief Prakash.
TN WAS ABLE TO ACHIEVE THE FETE BECAUSE OF BETTER RT-PCR FACILITIES AND PATIENT TRACKING SYSTEM BECAUSE OF PAST EFFORTS IN AIDS AND
H1N1 CONTROL