CHENNAI: No street in Chennai has three or more index cases, thereby removing the need for declaring any containment zone in the city for now, the officials of city corporation have said. The concept of containment zone in the city has evolved since the onset of pandemic in March.
Initially, houses in the five-kilometre radius of a patient’s house were treated as a containment zone. Later, only streets with five or more index cases or families were considered containment zones. At present, a street that has three or more index cases or families are containment zones.
“We have not changed the containment strategy as such. Now, there are no streets with three or more index cases and hence, no containment zones. If it were to occur in future, the street will be contained as usual,” a senior corporation official told TNIE.
Former Director of Public Health K Kolandaisamy told TNIE that lack of three or more index cases or families affected with Covid in the same street could be possible at this point of time. “Covid first spread in densely populated areas of the city where cases are more likely to occur in clusters. Since then, the infections have moved on to other places like Anna Nagar and Adyar where such clusters are less likely,” he said.
The city corporation has already done away with its tin-sheet-containment strategy where the entry points to a house with Covid patients were sealed with tin sheets to keep the residents from going out until the end of their quarantine period. Now, the city corporation’s volunteers are just keeping a tab of residents who are under isolation.