MADURAI: After almost a month of an alarming surge in Covid-19 cases, the numbers of fresh cases, and active cases and positivity rate came down in the last couple of weeks in the district.
As of June 19, the highest number of fresh cases reported on a day stood at 58. In less than a month's time, the number rose to 464 on July 13. However, in the past 12 days, less than 200 fresh cases were reported every day. Notably, after a gap of 46 days, 40 cases were reported on August 4.
Besides, the test positivity rate, which rose to around 18 per cent last month, has now gone down to less than three per cent. The number of active cases in the district also is on a declining trend. While the number of active cases escalated to 1,708 on June 30, it went down the 1,000-mark on August 11.
Meanwhile, on Wednesday, the total number of Covid-19 deaths crossed the 300-mark, recording 303 deaths. Of them, 207 deaths (68.3 per cent) were reported in July alone and 51 deaths (16.8 per cent) in this month so far.
Collector TG Vinay told TNIE, cited "Continuous fever surveillance, aggressive focused testing, effective contact tracing, strict containment of streets/areas and effective monitoring of the markets" as the reasons for the gradual yet steady dip in the number of fresh and active Covid-19 cases in the district. The location of fever clinics have been decided after street-wise/area-wise analysis of fever/ILI cases reported the previous day, he added. "Effective enforcement of mask usage and social distancing through the deployment of flying squads also helped to achieve this result," the Collector mentioned.
Denying that the number of Covid-19 tests in the district have come down, he said, "Around mid-July, the number of tests conducted on a day was about 5,200. Currently, an average of about 4,000 samples are tested daily."