On July 4, Chennai reversed the trend of 2,000-plus COVID-19 cases that it had been reporting daily since the last week of June. The graph first went down to 1,842 cases, and after that, it has dipped further and reached 1,216 on July 9. That the COVID infections curve went down though daily testing hovered around the 11,000 mark signals a promising trend for a city that was weighed down by excessive viral load throughout May and June.
The number of positive cases for every 100 tests in Chennai is also down from 24.2% in June to 18.2% so far in July. On Wednesday alone, the positivity rate dived to 11.87%. The other welcome trend in Chennai is the longer time being taken to record double the number of cases. The doubling time has gone up to 25 days now. Last month, it was 4-15 days.
Experts consider any doubling rate over 14 days to be good and this is a clear indication that the rate of transmission has slowed down, with densely crowded areas in the city like Royapuram and Tondiarpet, where the Chennai Corporation had focused its “trace and test” formula, showing a good report card. Royapuram stood first with a doubling time of 57.1 days, while in Tondiarpet it was a decent 32.7 days.
Experts have attributed this downward curve to the recent intense lockdown in Chennai for more than two weeks. The setting up of fever camps across many localities, intensified testing and door-to-door monitoring seem to have been effective.
With CM Edappadi Palaniswami ruling out another intense lockdown so that the economy is not hurt further, the plan is to expand such fever clinics to factories, offices, shops and markets as many have resumed a near-normal routine. But it is too early to celebrate this trend. The responsibility also lies with the people. The day Chennai was unlocked for the second time on July 6, many threw social distancing norms to the wind in streets and market places. The guidelines to be followed to prevent corona spread have been widely disseminated, but it will all come to naught without people’s participation.