CHENNAI: As many as 1890 people in the city have been home-quarantined with Teynampet and Adyar zones having the highest number of them, the city civic body said on Wednesday.
In Teynampet, a total of 522 people have been quarantined, of which 341 have already completed the quarantine period of 28 days. Mapped against the Teynampet area's population of around 8 lakhs, the Thiru Vi Ka Nagar zone with around the same population has only 88 cases.
In the Adyar zone, 293 people have been quarantined at home.
However, those quarantined are not symptomatic so far, said corporation officials and that have been quarantined only on the basis of their travel history to coronavirus-affected countries.
"These people don't have symptoms. We are simply taking precautionary measures," said a senior corporation official.
Will house quarantining to prove ineffective for North Chennai?
Out of around 20 lakh people in the Northern zone of the city (comprising Thiruvottiyur, Manali, Madhavaram, Tondiarpet and Royapuram), 227 people have been quarantined. The number is not high, but in the unfortunate event of it going up, house quarantining would prove ineffective in the region which is densely populated, say health experts.
"It is true that in such cases house quarantining would be ineffective. But for now, there are not many people from North Chennai region who have had a travel history to affected countries. So it is not likely that such a situation would arise," a senior official from the health department told The New Indian Express.
Keeping in mind that the symptoms may show up after the screening at airports and railway stations, officials have launched a door-to-door operation to scan households for symptoms of COVID-19.
It will not involve thermal scanning, said corporation officials, adding, under this, the city corporation's DBC (Domestic Breeding Checkers) workers would visit each house and verbally take note of symptoms including fever and cough.
"Our health and medical officers would then use the data and analyse it for trends. Based on that, interventions would be done," Corporation Commissioner G Prakash told TNIE.
Total: 1890