Madurai MP Su. Venkatesan has asked Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami to clarify as to why Madurai district is reporting double the number COVID-19 deaths compared to Chennai.

In a statement, Mr. Venkatesan said that when Chennai had 3,000 COVID-19 positive patients, it reported 24 deaths. However, with a similar number of infected patients, Madurai recorded 51 deaths. “While Chennai registered 42 deaths when the number of positive cases rose to 5,000, Madurai has reported 86 deaths with the same number of cases,” he said.

“Why is the the same disease causing 200% deaths in Madurai? We cannot take the fatality rate in Madurai as just caused by COVID-19,” the Communist Party of India (Marxist) MP said adding that “the higher rate of death in Madurai could be due to the shortcomings and carelessness of the district administration.”

Ambulances diverted

He found fault with the State government for having diverted ambulances from southern districts to Chennai, through oral instructions, when the COVID-19 infection was peaking in the State capital. As a result 40 ambulances from Madurai and its neighbouring districts, along with 200 employees, were taken to Chennai.

“There was nothing wrong in the move as it was to meet the emergency requirements of Chennai. However, even after the number of cases in Madurai and other districts witnessed a sudden surge in the last two weeks, the ambulances and the employees have not returned to the southern districts,” the MP charged.

Complaining that lack of adequate number of ambulances had put the people of southern districts to untold sufferings, Mr. Venkatesan said that patients here had to wait for four to five hours for ambulances. “While calls for ambulances are made in late evenings, the vehicles arrive only in the mornings,” he said.

An ambulance from as far as Elumalai in Madurai district was sent to pick up a patient in Sakkimangalam. Besides, the MP charged that the same ambulance that had dropped a COVID-19 positive patient in the hospital, picked up a patient recovered from the infection without any disinfection. The State government should send all the ambulances back to the southern districts immediately, he appealed.

Stating that the number of tests in Madurai has not been increased to its proportionate need, he said if only 3,000 tests were done every day, the rate of infection could be checked. The Chief Minister should find out whether the problem was in tracing the infected or in taking the patients to hospitals or in providing proper treatment to them and set everything right to reduce the number of deaths in Madurai, he said.