COIMBATORE: Tamil Nadu Chief Secretary K Shanmugan on Saturday instructed Collector K Rajamani to bring down Covid-19 positivity rate below five per cent and maintain daily cases below 100 by increasing the samples tested. The video conference session was attended by the heads of a few districts, with Coimbatore on the priority list, that witnessed a spike in Covid cases, said an official source.
Shanmugan also suggested that the department mainly tested the primary and the secondary contacts of those infected instead of carrying out random sampling as the latter might not be helpful at all times.
Speaking to TNIE, Collector K Rajamani said the district's positivity rate currently stands at 8.7 per cent. "For the past few days, Coimbatore has been recording 500 to 600 fresh cases every day. Already, we adopted a rigorous strategy to contain the spread of Covid-19. Now, we would make some minor changes to better the situation," he said.
On testing of samples, he assured that the district health department would collect samples ten times of the daily cases recorded in the district. "Besides, we will mainly focus on tracing and testing the patients' contacts to break the chain."
The collector further said that the only way to diagnose people of Covid-19 symptoms is by conducting more fever camps in the containment zones. In the non-containment zones, volunteers hired by the Coimbatore City Municipal Corporation (CCMC) would conduct door-to-door screening of the residents to check for any symptoms of the viral infection. On the other hand, private hospitals have been directed to increase the bed count, particularly in the Intensive Care Units, to handle the fresh cases, the collector added.