CHENNAI: As on Monday, Thiruvottiyur zone has the lowest percentage of active COVID-19 cases in Chennai. The percentage of active cases has halved from 12% on August 4 to 6%.
Corporation officials in the zone along with the monitoring officer in charge credit the rigorous micro-level data collection exercise here for the reduction of active cases.
The zonal control centre that was set up as part of the zone's fight against COVID-19 became a data collection centre where data from various departments including sanitary inspectors and health workers is being compiled.
"We now have extremely accurate and good data about the streets, businesses and people in Thiruvottiyur zone,” said a senior official in charge of COVID measures in the zone. This data may prove useful for the city corporation even for non-COVID related activities in future.
Elango Raghupathy, the project head of the zonal control centre, said that the zone has identified 15,754 people with co-morbidities and around 50,000 who were vulnerable including senior citizens. Further, streets where new cases were reported and those that were free of cases after initially reporting high numbers of cases were identified.
Based on the enumeration, the number of fever camps was increased from 12-14 to 18, along with two mobile fever camps.
For the flow of data into the control centre, there were other aspects to be smoothed out, said Elango.
“For instance, we had to streamline the reporting system for sector workers and door to door survey workers. As we smoothed it out and told them exactly what the protocol is, we found that more people with ILI symptoms were being identified and taken to fever camps,” he said.
According to corporation officials, the reduction in active cases will continue into the future since the test positivity rate has reduced.
However, the mortality rate in the zone still remains on the higher side at 2.94%, second only to the Teynampet zone. Officials had said it was because of the number of people categorised as
vulnerable residing in the zone.