Chennai's daily cases rise by 50pc in a day, 5 streets made containment zones

After a gap of several months, daily COVID cases in Chennai reported a steep hike of over 50 per cent in a day. As many as 294 fresh cases were reported in the State over the past 24 hours. As on Wednesday morning, five streets in the city were classified as containment zones.

The number of fresh cases across TN went up to 739, including five international passengers from UAE, five imported cases from West Bengal and one from Bihar, a release stated. On Tuesday, the city had only 194 new cases.

Dr Prabhdeep Kaur, deputy director of the National Institute of Epidemiology confirmed the indications of an increasing trend in the number of cases in Chennai in a tweet.

The State has reported 46 omicron cases so far, of which, two were cross notified to Kerala and Puducherry. While 27 of them were discharged after treatment, 17 are under treatment. 

Chennai has the highest number of active Omicron cases at eight, followed by four in Madurai, two in Tiruvannamalai and one each in Kanniyakumari, Salem and Tiruvarur. With the increase in cases, the Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC) classified five streets as containment zones. Of them, four have 6 to 10 positive cases and one street has 10 to 25 positive cases. “In total, as many as 507 streets have positive cases, of which 429 have less than 3 active cases. The city has 39,537 streets,” Health Minister M Subramanian said.

According to Tamil Nadu Health Secretary J Radhakrishnan, the number of testing increased to 23,000 from 15,000 in Chennai on Tuesday, and it is expected to increase further in the coming days.

“Though cases continue to rise in the city, people need not panic as many of the cases are through contact tracing. People should be more cautious and follow COVID protocols and avoid gatherings,” he said.

While 78 streets have three active cases, 42 streets have four active cases and 18 streets have five active cases. Around 1,400 houses in the containment zones and 5,600 persons are living inside those zones. After the number of cases started coming down post-second wave, the civic body stopped creating containment zones.

The city had as many as 1,689 active cases as of Wednesday. Of the total active cases, none are under home quarantine until Tuesday while only 72 active cases are in COVID care centres and the remaining cases are in hospitals.

On Tuesday alone, the Greater Chennai Corporation collected as many as 14,537 samples of which 56 samples were tested positive.

The samples were taken from symptomatic persons as well as from contacts of positive persons.