Express News Service
CHENNAI: The Chennai Corporation officials said that they are no longer barricading houses of Covid-19 patients in the city and stopped the practice for about a month now.
“Tin sheets were not used to barricade houses for the past month. They will only be used to barricade just the roads in containment zones,” Corporation Commissioner G Prakash told Express.
The Madras High Court on October 6 questioned the rationale adopted by the Chennai Corporation for barricading houses of positive patients with tin sheets without any scientific evidence.
Hearing a public interest litigation filed by a city-based advocate, whose house was barricaded by the civic body after her husband tested positive, a division bench of the high court pulled up the civic body chief and asked him to explain the rationale behind blocking the entrance of the houses.
The commissioner has been summoned to appear through video conference on November 10.
Since May, many instances of residents getting locked up inside their houses with no way to enter or exit were shared in social media.
However, presently, if a person tests positive, the civic body just pastes a Covid-19 warning poster outside the person’s house and pastes another poster with the patient’s name and quarantine period.
Officials said that as cases rose in the city in high numbers, it was not feasible to barricade each and every house.
“We expect people to cooperate and follow the home quarantine protocols,’’ an official with the civic body’s health department said.
The civic body has collected fines amounting to a total of Rs. 2.57 crores from people who violated COVID-19 safety protocols including home quarantine rules. In this, Rs. 13.24 lakhs were collected from people who didn’t wear masks.
The highest amount – Rs. 45.37 lakhs – was collected from the Royapuram zone, followed by Rs. 28.14 lakh from Tondiarpet zone.
For about two months, the civic body had also stopped barricading streets as many streets did not have five index cases, even though cases kept coming around 1,000 a day.
“We are seeing hotspots and clusters in certain areas like Ambattur. So, we are barricading roads. Volunteers will help residents with all essentials as usual,’’ the official said.
The city currently has 70 containment zones and among them, the highest is Ambattur with 29 zones, followed by 11 in Tondiarpet.
Officials with Ambattur zones said that clusters were recorded in Mogappair East and West.
“We don’t know the sources of spread. Earlier, localities around Ambattur were a hotspot. Mogappair is not far away, so there could have been a spread,’’ the official said.
A high number of cases were recorded in areas such as Thirumangalam and Padi which falls under the Ambattur zone.
Apart from the containment zones, the city currently has 682 streets with positive cases. In this, about 100 streets are in Teynampet.
Source: https://www.newindianexpress.com/cities/chennai/2020/oct/11/not-blocking-houses-of-covid-19-patients-anymore-says-chennai-corporation-2208924.html
