MADURAI
Madurai district does not have any containment zones at the moment, according to a Tamil Nadu Government notification issued on June 5 under the Disaster Management Act of demarcation of containment zones.
The notification states that other districts, including Kanniyakumari, Ramanathapuram, Tenkasi, Thoothukudi and Tirunelveli, continue to have containment zones.
Madurai district, on the other hand, is moving towards containing specific houses, apartments and premises rather than creating containment zones unless there are over five cases in a single street.
Deputy Director of Health Services Priya Raj says that the district is adhering to the State Government’s changing guidelines on containment zone planning and also going beyond them to ensure safety.
They are identifying index cases, testing contacts and containing their movement as usual but not imposing strong restrictions on others who are non-contact in their areas, she said.
When the guidelines came into force in March, containment zones were demarcated for a radius of five km where the index case was identified. A separate buffer zone was extended from the containment zone for another two km.
Later, in May, an area that has more than five positive primary COVID-19 cases or more than five families infected with COVID-19 was said to be considered a containment area and was demarcated from the rest of the uninfected areas.
Dr. Priya Raj said that there had not been any cluster developments in the recent past and there had been far more scattered cases than before.
An official from the health department said that to be on the safer side, the department had been asking to seal the entire street but the restrictions on movement were a little bit more free.
“People were flouting the norms and leaving containment zones even when strong a enforcement of restrictions wsa present,” he said.
A senior official from Government Rajaji Hospital said that containment of cases was the prerogative at the moment.
“As long as samples are diligently being collected from primary contacts and streets are being sealed with more than five cases, then we will be able to contain more cases. If not, we will continue to see a spike,” the doctor said.