Fever camps conducted by the Greater Chennai Corporation has become one of the successful COVID-19 control strategies as the officials have managed to identify more than 10,000 cases through the camps.
Chennai:
According to Corporation data, the civic body had identified as many as 35,211 persons with influenza-like-illness (ILI) between May 8 and July 3. Of the total identified cases, the officials collected samples from 31,124 persons and sent them for testing.
"Among the tested samples, as many as 10,093 persons have been identified as positive cases, which is 28.7 per cent of the total ILI cases and 32.42 per cent positivity among the tested samples," the data says.
Initially, the civic body was conducting fever camps only at containment zones and slum areas to identify COVID-19 infected persons and to break the chain. Later, the number of fever camps increased and the civic body appointed Unit Health Officers and Divisional Health Officers to conduct the camps.
"From May 8 to July 3, the civic body had conducted 11,877 camps across the city in which 7.72 lakh persons took part to check their health conditions. Positivity rate is on the higher side only because of focused screening by our doctors and testing. Fever camps are being conducted in more than 500 locations every day," a senior civic official said.
The data also suggest that more than 55 per cent of samples taken from ILI cases in Anna Nagar zone at the fever camps turned positive. Of the 3,865 ILI cases identified in Anna Nagar, 2,127 persons had confirmed positive. Similarly, 56.4 per cent and 52.6 per cent of the identified ILI cases turned out to be positive cases in Manali and Madhavaram zones. In Perungudi, 51.9 per cent of the samples were tested positive.
Only around 11 per cent fever clinic samples in Tiruvottiyur are positive. As on Monday evening, the city had 24,052 active cases.