Chennai Koyambedu market cluster expands further; Tamil Nadu’s tally at 4,829

The Koyambedu market cluster expanded further with Tamil Nadu registering 771 fresh Covid-19 cases on Wednesday, taking the state’s tally to 4,829. Besides Chennai, at least half a dozen districts in north Tamil Nadu reported a massive spike in their Coronavirus numbers as the cluster expands further.

The cluster is growing bigger day by day with more than 800 cases, including contacts of primary patients, and the worst-affected are labourers working at the wholesale market, one of the largest in Asia.

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Tamil Nadu tested 13,413 samples, highest so far, on Wednesday taking the total samples tested to 1,88,241. All 771 who tested positive on Wednesday are listed as contacts, in what could mean that contact tracing is happening at a fast pace.

Ariyalur, a backward district in north Tamil Nadu, registered 188 cases, while its neighbouring Cuddalore had 95 fresh patients on Wednesday. Both these districts send thousands of people to cities like Chennai for jobs of all kinds.

The magnitude of the spread of the virus from the cluster was visible on Wednesday with almost all districts in the northern region reporting positive cases. Chennai’s neighbouring districts Kanchipuram and Tiruvallur recorded 45 and 34 cases respectively, while Vellore had 6, Tiruvannamalai (17), Chengalpattu (9) and Villupuram (5).

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The cluster has also spread to far-away districts like Dindigul and Madurai which reported 9 and 20 fresh cases on Wednesday, respectively.

“It is emerging as the biggest cluster and we have now gone into targeted testing. We are testing people who have shops in Koyambedu and also people who come forward saying they went to the market. We hope testing of all the contacts will end in the next few days,” a Health Department official said.

Koyambedu is the biggest wholesale vegetable market in Tamil Nadu and receives at least 15,000 visitors a day. The market which has both wholesale traders and retailers reported its first case on April 24, though it was closed completely only after 10 days.

Hundreds of vegetable dealers come from across the state, especially from northern districts, to buy and sell vegetables. The Koyambedu cluster is emerging as the biggest after the religious congregation in Delhi and might even surpass the numbers registered by the latter.

And contact tracing is also proving to be difficult in Chennai city as hundreds of people had visited the retail vegetable market inside the complex for the first one month of the lockdown period.

“Tracing contacts in districts are a little easy since some of them were identified and lodged in quarantine centers. And the government also had a list of labourers who are being traced. But in Chennai, you cannot collect details of those who visited the market,” a district collector said.

Meanwhile, the state’s death toll went up to 35 with two people -- a 68- year-old man with comorbidities and a 59-year-old man – passing away.