Sanitary inspectors asked to collect 50 samples each from all 200 wards daily

According to a Chennai Corporation official, Harmander Singh, secretary of municipal administration and water supply department instructed the civic body to increase sample collection and fine imposition for non-adherence to social distancing and mask compliance.

“In his message, the secretary pointed out that the fine collection has come down to Rs 50,000 per day from Rs 4 lakh per day,” the official said.

The official added that sanitary inspectors of each division have been asked to collect not less than 50 samples every day to reach the overall testing figure of 10,000 per day.

According to data released by the Chennai Corporation, the city had tested only 7,794 samples on Tuesday and 7,545 samples on Monday. It may be noted that the civic body was testing 13,000 to 14,000 samples per day a few weeks ago and more than 10,000 samples were tested every day until a few days ago.

“If we collect 50 tests from each division, samples collected in private and government labs will add up. This way, we can test at least 12,000 samples per day,” a sanitary inspector said.

Meanwhile, the test positivity rate in the city was at 6.58 per cent and 6.31 per cent on Monday and Tuesday, when the city reported 497 and 492 new COVID-19 cases respectively.

As per the civic body data, Chennai had 4,822 active cases on Wednesday morning, which is only 2 per cent of the total cases reported. Also, more than 2.01 lakh persons had recovered, which is 96 per cent recovery rate. However, 3,783 persons had died due to the disease.