Covid-19 in Chennai: Glimmer of hope or a flash in the pan?

Amid the rising Covid-19 cases across the city, Tondiarpet zone in North Chennai, Chennai’s second biggest hotspot after Royapuram, has shown a dip in active cases. The number of active cases in the zone has dropped by almost 20% from the high of the past 10 days.
The number of recovered Covid-19 patients has exceeded the number of fresh cases in the zone and this comes at a time when testing has been ramped up in the zone.

Data from the past 10 days shows that the number of active cases in the zone was around 2,100 a day, with a high of 2,373 on June 24 and 2,351 on June 22. On June 25, this is down to 1891, recording a 20% drop. This figure is also its lowest in three weeks.
K Pandiarajan, state minister who is looking after the zone, tweeted about it on Thursday. “Tondiarpet recorded the highest daily recovery of 757 patients leading to lowest active case figure of 1,891 in three weeks, improving its rank from first to fifth in a fortnight. Kudos to the dedicated field team and leadership,” he said.
But Greater Chennai Corporation officials are watchful, they don’t want to celebrate too early. Officials said this can be attributed to pointed interventions in the zone. “Discharges are decided by the government hospital doctors, while corporation is involved in field work. So we can’t provide actual reasons, but only assumptions,” an official said.
K P Karthikeyan, the nodal officer for the zone, said the R (naught) – infection rate -- is now officially below 1 for the zone.
Karthikeyan said cases were being identified early by intensive testing in the areas as well as identification of the highest number of Influenza like Illness (ILI) cases in the city. “In areas where people are not able to come for testing, we sent mobile testing vans,” he said.
Health secretary J Radhakrishnan said this was a result of a combination of residents adopting a healthy non-medical behaviour of wearing masks and physical distancing along with the efforts of field support teams.
The other zone that has shown a drop in the number of active cases over the past 10 days is Teynampet. It had 2,031 active cases on June 25, lower than the high recorded on June 18 (2,162 cases). Thiru-vi-ka Nagar has also recorded a drop, with the active cases on Thursday being 1,205 as compared to a high of 1359 on June 21.
However, similar trends are not visible for Royapuram, which on Thursday recorded its highest active cases in the city. Active cases in Anna Nagar are also increasing.