Districts around Chennai still battle high Covid test positivity rate, deaths
Chengalpattu district officials told The New Indian Express that the TPR as recorded on Friday was 19.7%.
Published: 30th May 2021 06:36 PM
Police charging fine for those roaming without masks at Egmore in Chennai. (Photo | R.Satish Babu, EPS)
Express News Service
CHENNAI: While the Test Positivity Rate (TPR) in Chennai is on a downward trend, most recently at 8.8%, its neighbouring districts still have some work left to be done.
Chengalpattu district officials told The New Indian Express that the TPR as recorded on Friday was 19.7% and health officials in Tiruvallur said that they were maintaining daily samples at around 9,000 which would bring its TPR to around 12% as on Saturday. Many of Chennai's suburban and peri-urban areas come under these districts.
Another concern is that though the new Covid cases registered in these districts are on a decreasing trend, the deaths due to the virus remain the same or in some cases, higher when comparing two most recent seven-day blocks from May 16 to 22 and May 23 to 29. In Chengalpattu, when the number of new cases registered a decrease of 25.9% between these two time frames, the number of deaths remained the same.
In Tiruvallur, when the number of cases registered decreased by 32%, deaths increased by 22.2%. Similarly in Kancheepuram, when the cases decreased by 17%, the deaths increased by 23.5%. The increase in mortality in these two districts were much higher when compared to Chennai where the deaths increased by 4.91% in the compared time frames.
District officials in Tiruvallur said that the district administration and health officials were working to bring down deaths, along with the number of Covid 19 positive cases.
“We have six Covid care centres, two of which have been converted to Oxygen supported facilities, along with seven triaging centres. At the triaging centres, we have a colour coded card system where patients are issued green, yellow and red cards- for home quarantine (mild cases), covid care centre admission (moderate cases) and hospital admission for more severe cases,” said a health official.
We also have kiosk vehicles that collect swab samples from around 80 locations everyday so that no area is left uncovered, he added.
“The cases have come down in almost all areas including Poonamallee where a high number of cases used to be registered everyday,” the official said.
While health officials in Kancheepuram were not reachable for comment, Chengalpattu district officials said that the vaccination drives were reaching satisfactory numbers everyday and steps are being taken to increase awareness on vaccination.
“With higher vaccination numbers, we are already taking several measures for early detection of cases which will reduce the deaths,” an official said.
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