Given the increase in number of cases in the city, the Coimbatore Corporation has planned to increase the number of people it has deployed for conducting door-to-door survey.
On Tuesday, Corporation Commissioner P. Kumaravel Pandian had said that the Corporation had already increased the number from 800 to over 2,000.
Now, the Corporation was looking at doubling the number to take the total number of persons engaged in the survey to around 5,000.
Since the start of the survey a few days ago, the Corporation had checked on people in 55,181 households and had identified 1,530 persons with influenza-like infection symptoms.
As the Corporation planned to continue the survey in all the households in the city and doing a second and third round of checking as well, it required more personnel, the sources said and added very soon it would deploy 3,000-odd persons.
But, the problem was in mobilising as many people as it required.
The persons were asking the city’s residents about their health condition, pre-existing diseases, complications, if any, and checking their oxygen level using pulse oximeter, temperature using thermal scanner and if the persons reported in the affirmative for any of the questions on fever, the surveyors gave them zinc and multivitamin tablets.
They also advised them to immediately approach the nearest Corporation-run fever camps, urban primary health centres or a private lab to give swab samples. Further, the surveyors also shared the phone number of such persons for follow-up action.
Meanwhile, the Corporation had asked the labs to whom it sent samples to quickly process them and declare results.
Sources said with the increase in the number of swab samples and the number crossing 10,000 in the last few days, there was a day’s or two days’ delay in declaring the results. The civic body was, therefore, working on quickening the time taken to declare the results.
Disinfection drive
Meanwhile, the Corporation had also intensified the disinfection drive. At the M.G.R. Wholesale Vegetable Market, the Corporation was already disinfecting twice a day – at 7.30 a.m. and around noon.
It would soon deploy more vehicles and bigger vehicles to intensify the drive, the sources added.
