Health dept yet to identify sources other than clusters

Of all the positive cases of COVID-19 recorded in the State, there are five clusters identified by the State Health Department: the Delhi conference attendees, travellers from foreign countries and other states, journalists’, Koyambedu market and Thiru-Vi-Ka Nagar prayer group.

As of Wednesday, Tamil Nadu has reported 9,227 cases of COVID-19, of which roughly 1,700 are those who had attended the Delhi conference and their contacts. The foreign nationals and travellers who tested positive and their contacts number about 600, while nearly 1,900 are linked to the Koyambedu market cluster. The Thiru-Vi-Ka Nagar prayer cluster has more than 210 people. The total number of cases from these four clusters number to roughly 4,400.

The rest of the cases are labelled as contact cases, but the State Health Department has not revealed the source of infection in many of these cases. Officials deny community transmission, claiming that they are conducting testing on individuals only through contract tracing. “There is no scope for confirming community transmission unless we do random testing,” said a Health official.

Director of Public Health Dr TS Selvavinayagam said, “Whenever there is a positive case, we are tracing contacts. We will trace and probe the source and will identify all the possible contacts of the patient that he/she reveals. There are no new sources that have come up. We will not miss anyone.”