Field officials in city instructed to increase daily tests to 25,000

According to a Chennai Corporation official, Corporation Commissioner G Prakash issued the instruction during a meeting with field-level officials at the Ripon Building on Thursday. 

“Presently, we are testing between 15,000 to 17,000 persons per day. As the test positivity rate has increased from around 1 per cent to 15 per cent in the second wave, we are going to test more samples,” an official said. 

The civic body has tested close to 40 lakh samples since the outbreak of the pandemic in March 2020. 

The official added that sanitary inspectors have been instructed to trace the contacts of infected persons at the ward level and take samples from them. The civic body also collects samples at the fever clinics from those who have symptoms. On Thursday, the civic body tested 15,302 samples, while it tested 17,062 samples on Wednesday. 

Meanwhile, the civic body has constituted teams at the zonal, unit and ward levels to micro manage the preventive measures. “We will disinfect offices and houses of the infected persons to prevent it from spreading further,” he said. 

A Chennai Corporation statement said the field-level officials were collecting fines from the persons violating COVID-19 norms. As of Thursday, the civic body has collected Rs 3.71 crore from individuals and commercial establishments. 

As per the civic body, Chennai has more 22,400 active cases on Friday, which is more than 8 per cent of the total cases reported in the city. As of Friday morning, Anna Nagar and Teynampet zones have more than 2,000 active cases with 2,375 and 2,366 cases respectively.