An effective plan to control the pandemic in Chennai – The Hindu

The city has once again set an example for the State and the country in containing the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, like it did during the first wave.

The second wave saw a huge spike in cases, with the health infrastructure getting overwhelmed by the first week of May. However, the experience gained from the first wave, along with an efficient pandemic prevention plan put in place by the Greater Chennai Corporation helped bring things under control. Hospitals, which faced severe bed shortages at one point of time in May, have been able to breathe easy with the reduction in the intake of patients and the availability of a large number of beds.

While the lockdown helped, the implementation of the ‘Revised Micro-Plan for COVID-19 Management’ by the Public Health Department from May 19 played a crucial role.

The civic body’s learnings from the past year — surveillance, contact tracing and containment activities — combined with an integrated pandemic management of organising fever camps in hotspots, vaccination camps by tying up with residential welfare associations and big companies, and the conversion of care centres to health centres have worked well on the field.

Corporation Commissioner Gagandeep Singh Bedi said the rolling out of a modified plan from the one used for the first wave helped in containing the pandemic early, which could have otherwise spiralled out of control. He said in the second wave, the civic body took all-out efforts to understand every single case with the revised plan, and a key component involved making private hospitals, clinics and scan centres share details of patients with local officials. Through these arrangements, several fever cases, which would otherwise have remained untraceable, were detected early.

Since Mr. Bedi took charge, the Corporation has been engaging in several containment activities, consisting of both active and passive surveillance, aggressive testing of more than 30,000 swab tests, organising fever camps in hotspots, creating single window systems for lab results, systematic contact tracing, following up of individuals under home isolation and strict enforcement of containment measures in streets registering more than 10 cases.

The city, which witnessed nearly 7,000 new cases in the mid of May, has seen the number reduce to less than 2,600 by the end of the month.

He said the civic body had been containing the pandemic with focus on efficient coordination between officials. He said: “A clear delineation of role and responsibilities of the workforce management at the division, unit, zonal and regional levels was done and instructions were issued to the officials.”

The daily review meetings conducted by senior officials also helped greatly, Mr. Bedi added.