The number of COVID-19 cases per day in Chennai is increasing, and is expected to touch 5,000 soon, said G. Prakash, Commissioner of the Greater Chennai Corporation.
Mr. Prakash told presspersons that residents with mild symptoms had been advised not to visit government tertiary care hospitals to prevent crowding. Instead, they should visit the 12 screening centres of the Corporation.
Over 85% of the patients had mild symptoms and were being advised home isolation or admitted to COVID-19 care centres, Mr. Prakash said.
“Our aim is to prevent an exponential growth of cases. We are taking steps to prevent cases from increasing to more than 15,000 or 20,000 a day. At present, the cases have crossed 3,800 per day. We expect the peak by the end of May,” he said.
Priority for serious cases
The daily tally of cases had been on the upward trend for the past 35 days. Keeping this in view, the civic body was taking steps to reduce crowding at the four major government hospitals. Only serious cases would receive priority at these hospitals.
“Residents who test positive with mild symptoms will be taken by Corporation employees to the screening centres at 12 locations,” said Mr. Prakash.
Pointing to the State government’s direction to allocate 50% of the beds to COVID-19 patients at all hospitals, he said only severe cases should be admitted there.
“Doctors may not be able to give quality care to serious cases in the event of crowding of patients with mild symptoms. The increase in the number of patients dying of COVID-19 is because of such issues,” the Commissioner said.
Vaccine stock
Stressing the need for giving priority to the second vaccine dose, Mr. Prakash said the city had a stock of 10,658 doses of Covaxin and 75,000 doses of Covishield.
“Three days ago, we had three lakh doses. We have covered 60% of the targeted population. Today, we received 2 to 3 lakh doses of vaccine. We have demanded 50% of the stock received by the State for Chennai as the population density is high. Some pockets have a population density of more than 60,000 per sq km,” he said.
Urging residents to wear masks, the Corporation Commissioner said the number of cases would reduce in one week if the mask discipline improved to more than 90%.
“We will launch an app for COVID in a few days. Our telecounselling facility receives 2,178 calls a day,” he said.