Mask compliance, one of the crucial COVID-19 appropriate behaviours, has decreased in the Greater Chennai Corporation. A survey found that nearly 79% of the people in slums and 73% in non-slums did not wear a mask or wore it incorrectly outdoors, while compliance had dropped in the malls.
Observing outdoor mask compliance in Chennai as part of Round 3 of the Chennai Mask Survey, the surveyors found that only 21% of the people in slums and 27% in non-slums wore them appropriately.
The survey, conducted by the Greater Chennai Corporation and the Indian Council of Medical Research-National Institute of Epidemiology (ICMR-NIE) from March 20 to 26, found that 56% of the people in slums and 53% in non-slums did not wear a mask outdoors. A total of 23% in slums and 20% in non-slums wore a mask either below the nose and mouth outdoors.
Outdoor areas
Compliance with the appropriate mask use decreased in the outdoor areas of all three regions of Chennai, in both slum and non-slum areas. It also found that indoor mask compliance remained the same in slum areas, while it increased in non-slum areas from 10% to 16%. However, the survey, in which 150 individuals were observed in each of the nine malls of Chennai, found that compliance dropped from 57% in December 2020 to 51% now.
This round of the survey observed a total of 3,200 individuals outdoors and 1,280 individuals indoors on 64 selected streets. Outdoor public places were streets in residential or commercial areas and bus stations, while indoor public places included settings that were open to the public and did not have any entry restrictions, such as grocery shops, vegetable shops, pharmacies, religious places and apparel stores.
The first-round was conducted in October 2020 when compliance was put at 28% in the slums and 36% in non-slums.
This was followed by the second-round in December 2020, when the compliance was almost similar. Given the slow rise in cases in Chennai in the latter half of March 2021, a third-round was conducted.