CHENNAI: Weeks after the daily COVID-19 tally in the city stabilized around the 1200 mark, the number of cases came down further to 1013, close to the three-digit mark, on Friday.
The COVID-19 growth rate in the city has been low ever since cases dropped from 2,400 in the first week of July. Since then, the number of people who recovered rose from 60 percent to 85 percent, while active cases have fallen to just 12.7 percent now.
Out of the 99,794 people infected in the city, 84,916 have been discharged, while only 12,765 are still undergoing treatment.
Officials from the Corporation’s Public Health Department said that most people who were diagnosed with COVID-19 in the first week of July have now been discharged. “The current active cases are those who tested positive in the past week or so,’’ the official said.
The official said that most of the cases are mild to moderate and were mostly diagnosed through fever camps or contact tracing. “They are kept in the care centres between four to seven days. Once they are stable, they are sent home on condition that they quarantine themselves for 14 days,’’ he said.
Corporation officials claimed that so far, the condition of patients has not deteriorated after they were sent home from care centres. "Door-to-door survey staff continue to monitor the discharged patients to ensure that their condition does not suddenly deteriorate," the official added.
Four corporation zones in the city -- Teynampet, Manali, Tondiarpet and Royapuram -- now have active cases at 10 percent or below. Six zones have a recovery rate of more than 85 percent.
With around 12,000 tests daily, the positivity rate in the city has been hovering around the 9 percent mark. The civic body has vowed to bring it to five percent by August. Experts said that a positivity rate of five percent or below is a good sign that the city has contained the spread.
However, the decrease in the number of people attending fever camps is a cause for concern. From about 30,000 people attending the camps daily in the first week of July, now only about 25,000 people attend daily.
Average outpatients per camp is low at just 48 people, which could be a good sign, while the positivity rate at the camps is 20 percent, as 15,113 people were found to be positive out of the 77,358 samples taken.