CHENNAI: With business across Chennai city slowly getting back to normal, the civic body is gearing up to tackle any situation, by increasing the number of beds at Covid care centres. “Although the occupancy is quite low —only around 3,000 of 20,000 beds at Covid Care Centres filled — we are planning to increase availability of beds.
The aim is to stay prepared for anything, although we are not seeing any alarming trend as of now,” a senior Corporation official told Express. The civic body is also taking into consideration the possibility of several educational institutions in the city, which have been converted temporarily into care centres, resuming operations.
R Satish Babu, Martin Louis
“We will be reworking to increase the number of beds in structures such as KP Park and Athipattu near Ambattur so that even if the institutions open up, it will not affect the availability of beds. These are structures that won’t be affected,” the official said.
Following the unlock, the city corporation has also made a few other changes in its approach to Covid containment. For instance, tin sheets that used to be nailed to the entrance of patients’ houses have been done away with.
“Instead, we have told our volunteers to ensure that people from those houses don’t step out. We have also found that in most cases, people do follow our instructions and stay indoors,” the official added. “We will watch the trend for the next 30 days and make changes in our measures wherever needed,” he said.
600 people fined
On Friday, the Corporation collected a fine of Rs 2.45 lakh from 600 individuals, who failed to wear masks and establishments that did not enforce social distancing.
Source: https://www.newindianexpress.com/cities/chennai/2020/sep/06/chennai-reboots-govt-ready-to-tackle-covid-spurt-2193107.html