GCC now overburdened with massive increase in the COVID cases
Posted on: 11/May/2021 9:18:00 AM
The Covid-19 infection numbers are on the rise in the city of Chennai and GCC is struggling to cope up with this sudden increase. It must be taken into account that in the last 2 weeks Chennai had more than 8000 Coronavirus cases and more than 70% are in home isolation. These home isolated patients are waiting for visits from healthcare nurses and sanitary workers is known.
Point is that 5000 patients who tested positive for Coronavirus infection before 26th April are also under home isolation. On Monday, 10th May, Chennai had as many as 71549 new cases.
According to an infectious disease expert Dr. S. Swaminathan, it was clear that patients must be in home isolation for 14 days after testing positive for Covid-19 infection. He added that those with mild or no symptoms must be in home isolation for all 14 days and those with moderate and severe symptoms would have to continue home isolation even after getting discharged 2 weeks before from the hospital. Even after becoming asymptomatic, patients would be able to transmit the infection to others. In the second week only, severe infection occurs (high morbidity and mortality seen) and there is enough evidence for that.
The number of focus volunteers is just 2000 and the fever surveillance works is 12000, Hence, GCC has been struggling to do surveillance and patient management. It was pointed out by some zonal corporation officers that the manpower with them was insufficient and a ward could be spared a maximum of 10 volunteers and about 60 fever surveillance workers. Last year, there were 15 focus volunteers in each ward as the number of fresh and active cases were less than half of that present now. Per day, a fever surveillance worker covered 150 to 200 houses last year.
Mr. Gagandeep Singh, the new Chennai corporation commissioner, spoke about how the volunteers could be increased due to more number of cases now. He was busy inspecting the ward offices yesterday. According to an officer belonging to GCC, the family clusters are big now and tracing the contacts would be a tedious process. There has been no testing done on the contacts of the active cases in the last 2 weeks. He hinted that the current total lock down would prevent transmission of the infection in Chennai. Information is that GCC is now planning to draft 200 more volunteers by next week.
