The Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC) has attributed the improvement to six important strategies the civic body adopted over a period of time.

“We have around 12,000 fever survey workers, we are visiting 100 to 150 houses every day to identify symptomatic cases. They are able to identify around 5,000 influenza-like illnesses (ILI) patients every day, whose samples are sent to testing. We are proactively finding COVID patients before their situation worsens,”Gagandeep Singh Bedi, GCC Commissioner, said.

Along with fever survey workers, Bedi said FOCUS volunteers, car ambulances, improved vaccination coverage and, directives to private labs to send results only to the civic body and tele-counselling centres are the other strategies that worked in the city. This helped reduce panic as people were informed of their health status by trained staff.

“Now, we have ordered private labs not to inform the test results to the patients directly without the knowledge of the Corporation. This avoids panic and unnecessary occupancy of oxygen beds. If the patients are below 60 years of age, zonal teams with doctors visit the houses to check on them and advise home quarantine or hospitalization,” he said.

Patients above 60 years of age are taken to screening centres on car ambulances, which supplement the ‘108’ vehicles. Visiting the COVID-positive houses for triaging avoids further spread of the virus. This is a strategy adopted across the world.

Meanwhile, the civic body appointed 300 final-year medical students and around 1,500 volunteers at tele-counselling centers to contact persons under home quarantine and track their health status.

“On Wednesday, more than 32,000 calls were made to the patients,” Bedi said.

“Vaccination is also an important strategy. We are conducting 280 vaccination special camps every day. The target is to cover 30,000 people per day. Also, we are giving zinc and other medicines for those with symptoms even before test results are received,” he added.

The Corporation had been adopting various control strategies to tackle the changing nature of the pandemic. It had identified psychological issues faced by patients as a major issue. Tele-counselling is being offered to those in need.