With the Community Intervention Programme, that focused on COVID 19 containment in the slum areas, coming to an end, households in city corporation limits that were surveyed for Covid 19 symptoms every day, will now be surveyed once in two days.
The Greater Chennai Corporation had roped in 92 NGOs to help control the COVID 19 cases specifically in slums. The Memorandum of Understanding signed between the two parties (Corporation and each NGO) in May for a period of 124 days, ended on Friday.
A senior corporation official told Express, "The CIP programme has given good results and the cases detected in slums have become very meagre, as analysed spatially and temporally."
Now, with the NGOs and their staff wrapping up their assignment, the city Corporation is set to reorganise its manpower in order to continue fever surveillance.
Initially, each survey worker was assigned to cover 100-150 houses every day. Now, each worker will be assigned 250 odd households, which they will survey over a period of two days.
Fever surveillance along with checking in fever camps has been one of the city Corporation strategies that has been credited with helping early detection and isolation of COVID 19 cases.
Survey workers identify persons with symptoms in each household and get them tested for the virus at their nearest fever camps,
"We are reorganising manpower to expand the geographical area for these fever survey workers. They will be allotted 250 plus households and checking will happen as usual. If it's not possible to cover in a single day, a minimum 48 hours cycle will be maintained," said a senior Corporation official.
Speaking to Express, a survey worker recruited temporarily by the city Corporation in Royapuram zone said. "We have been asked to alternate between slum and non-slum areas.
If we cover 100 odd houses in a slum today, tomorrow we will cover 100 odd houses in a non-slum area within the zone that is designated to each of us."
Although the fever surveillance may not happen in each house every day, it will still continue to remain a key strategy for the Corporation in the coming days, said a senior Corporation official.
"We know that door-to-door surveillance is one of the strong pillars of GCC's COVID 19 strategies. We are not letting the guard down anytime soon," said the official.