JOIN USEnsure Covid-19 appropriate behaviour among people: Tamil Nadu to collectors
With BA 4 and BA 5 sub-variants of the Omicron variant detected in the state, the Tamil Nadu government has asked district administrations to ensure compliance with Covid-19 appropriate behaviour like wearing a face mask and maintaining social distance in crowded places to prevent the spread of the virus.
The government has also expressed concern over the emergence of the institutional, workplace, and family clusters at frequent intervals and suggested saturation tests to ensure that the number of cases don’t increase exponentially. It also asked the district administration to enforce Covid appropriate behaviour and follow the testing-tracing-treatment-vaccination strategy to keep the new infections under control.
In a letter written to district collectors and district health officers, Principal Secretary (Health) Dr J Radhakrishnan said while there was no need for panic though there is a slight increase in the number of daily cases, the need of the hour is to again reiterate and ensure that people wear masks, especially in contained and crowded places.
Thermal screening of people in malls and other public places should be intensified, he said.
“So far, cases reported have been mild, but as the number increases mortality among Comorbid and or elderly, especially those whose immunity levels have gone down is also likely to increase,” Radhakrishnan said, adding that Chennai, Chengalpattu, Kanchipuram, Coimbatore, and Tiruvallur account for the maximum number of cases.
On institutional clusters, Radhakrishnan said index cases in these clusters have recent travel history or got exposed at a cultural event. This is a pointer to the need for self-health monitoring and reporting symptoms followed by testing and isolation for those returning from travel or reporting symptoms after events, he said.
He also pushed the district administrations to get unvaccinated to the vaccination centres to get their jabs by pointing out that as many as 43 lakh people haven’t taken their first Covid-19 vaccine dose yet, while the number of people due for their second dose is 1.21 crore. “The focus should be on vaccination and overcoming vaccine hesitancy among the eligible yet to get vaccinated persons and overcoming vaccine apathy among those who are eligible but yet to take the second and the booster dose,” he said.
Radhakrishnan also asked the district collectors to come out with a micro plan for the special mega camp being planned on June 12. On RT-PCR testing, the Health Secretary said people with symptoms in all settings should be tested and guided to self-isolation till results come and all influenza-like illnesses (ILI), and severe acute respiratory infections (SARI) should be part of the testing protocol.
“Those testing positive should continue in isolation and treated depending on their medical condition either in-home quarantine or in hospitals as per the assessment and their contacts traced and tested. Samples as per the protocol should also be sent for Whole genomic sequencing to get an idea of the circulating variant/lineages,” he added.
The daily cases, which had hit a two-year low of 22 on April 15, have now crossed 100. The cases have been on an increase for the past few days with 80 per cent of them being reported from two districts -- Chennai and Chengalpattu. However, there have been no Covid deaths in the past few months.
Tamil Nadu has so far reported 34 lakh Covid-19 cases with 38,025 deaths since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020.