Coronavirus in Chennai: Number of containment zones comes down – Times of India

CHENNAI: The Greater Chennai Corporation on Friday announced removal of 86 streets from the list of containment zones after they did not report any Covid-19 case for 14 days. Two days ago, the civic body had removed 376 streets from the containment zones list.
The number of streets under containment has come down to 635, with Royapuram and Thiru Vi Ka Nagar zones having the maximum 131 and 101. As on Wednesday, the city had 774 streets under containment.
In mid-April, the city had about 90 containment zones.
On Wednesday, the zones in which the maximum number of streets were removed from the containment list were Royapuram (zone 5)- 72 streets, followed by Thiru Vi Ka Nagar (zone 6)- 67 streets.
Tondiarpet, Teynampet and Valasarvakkam (zones 4, 9 and 11) have more than 30 streets removed from the list.
On Friday, 18 streets were removed from the list in Royapuram zone and 20 in Thiru Vi Ka Nagar.
“Earlier, we used to wait until 28 days with no case for a street to be removed. With the revised guidelines, now it is reduced to 14 days,” a zone level corporation official said.
A containment zone is an area where one or more residents have been found to be infected with coronavirus. Earlier, the city corporation followed a policy of barricading all entry and exit of the street preventing thoroughfare movement. However, for the past one week, the practice of barricading an entire street in case of less than five cases is not followed.
“If a person tests positive in an apartment complex, only the complex is under containment. In case of less than five cases, the house with the infected person and the houses neighbouring it will be under containment,” the official said.
TOI had earlier reported that around 30% of positive cases in the city continued to be recorded from people who were from outside the existing containment zones and it was one of the reasons why the number of containment zones in the city had steadily risen, despite several streets not recording cases for 14 days and getting off the list.