For a little over a month now, the COVID-19 cases in densely populated West Kochi have kept health officials on their toes with contact tracing and testing.
The first person in the area tested positive on July 15, and since then, till August 16, as many as 420 people had tested positive from West Kochi, said District Medical Officer N.K. Kuttappan.
In what is possibly the largest testing exercise in a single area in the district, over 5,110 samples were collected from West Kochi since the first positive case was detected, he added. A contact tracing process, complicated by the density of population in the area, and the possibility of people having gathered for work at the harbour or fish market, had yielded 910 primary and secondary contacts, said Dr. Kuttappan.
“The contact tracing and testing process hinges on cooperation from the people, many of whom are worried that testing positive or even going for a test might mean that they are ostracised by others,” said a junior public health nurse (JPHN) from the area. She pegged the start of the spike in cases in West Kochi on a construction site where a worker had tested positive in July and about 42 of his contacts were traced, while the source of his infection remained unknown.
The JPHNs, ASHA workers, health inspectors, junior health inspectors and the police were part of the contact tracing process, while doctors and officials at government hospitals in West Kochi had been supervising it, said a doctor at the Mattancherry Women and Children’s Hospital.
“While tracing contacts we also realised that the area has a large floating population, and we would end up asking neighbours for new contact numbers and addresses of people who might have moved. Irrespective of a lockdown, people tend to be careless. A 24-year-old who tested positive recently had 14 primary contacts – all friends who had visited him,” said the nurse.
The test positivity rate for West Kochi was 8.33%, said Dr. Kuttappan, adding that the strategy to contain the virus in the area remained one of tracing and aggressive testing of not just contacts, but also all symptomatic people. “In the fourth week since the disease was reported in West Kochi, we detected 172 positive cases. In the fifth week, which is last week, till August 16, only 57 cases were registered. If this continues, we might see a declining trend,” he said.
A 72-bed first-line treatment centre (FLTC) was functioning from the Mattancherry Town Hall and was running at full capacity, the doctor at the Mattancherry hospital said. “Several residents in these areas live in houses with single rooms. It is not possible for asymptomatic patients to remain in quarantine at home. Additional FLTCs would be necessary here, and another one is likely to begin functioning at Kalvathy soon,” added the doctor.
Kalvathy, Division 2 of the Kochi Corporation, has borne the brunt of the disease, where about 127 people have tested positive and over 70 people have recovered so far, according to Zeenath Rasheed, councillor representing the area.
For residents, however, the containment zone barricades had stood in the way of livelihoods, said Sheeja, a resident of Kalvathy, whose husband, a fish worker, has not been able to make it to the Thoppumpady harbour with the restrictions in place. Her own tailoring business had come to a near standstill, she said.