Lessons from TN corona spike

About a week ago, the spread of Covid-19 seemed somewhat under control in Tamil Nadu, with most new cases being reported only from the capital city of Chennai. However, from April 28 to May 5, the number of cases in the state have almost doubled from 2,058 to 4,058. The rise is being linked to the vendors and workers from the Koyambedu market in Chennai, one of the largest in South Asia.

The first cases from there were reported on April 27 in Chennai. Officials then embarked on the laborious task of contact tracing and screening workers and vendors across the state. This was easier done in districts where new entries could be screened on arrival. However, in Chennai, given the population density and the large crowds at the market, screening all people linked to Koyambedu remains a challenge. Meanwhile, at least two other clusters—linked to sanitary workers and volunteers—have developed in the city.

In the past week, the TN government has moved to contain the crisis spreading from the city by appointing a respected senior IAS officer as nodal officer for the capital. The market has been shut, parts of it shifted to the outskirts of the city, and to prevent hospitals from being overrun, asymptomatic and stable patients are being moved into care centres. Screening and testing has been decentralised and testing parameters widened—the state is already capable of testing well over 10,000 samples a day and has one of the highest rates of testing in the country.

However, as the state moves forward, it must also study what went wrong. For one, the risk posed by the market ought to have been anticipated and efforts to mitigate it should have been taken when the first lockdown was announced. Second, rigorous screening and crowd control ought to have been in place from Day 1. Third, the market’s custodian, the Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority, has neither the expertise nor the resources to manage it. The state must seriously consider shifting control of it to the city corporation to prevent such problems from emerging in the future.