Amid the sharpest surge in COVID-19 cases in Chennai, the city's corporation has now pitched in with the fresh containment measures to flatten the curve of the affected cases in the city, which has emerged as the biggest hotspot for the spread in Tamil Nadu and the third worst-hit Indian city after Mumbai and Delhi.

These measures would be in addition to the existing efforts and would largely concentrate on the containment and surveillance to detect the spread and to prevent the vulnerable groups at the early stages. According to the reports, the city would be focusing more on the containment in place of finding the source of the infection. 

Containing the spread among the vulnerable communities would be of major challenge and in order to meet that, the city would deploy additional workers and volunteers. The reports stated that the volunteers from community-based organizations would be appointed at ward level to make sure that people with high risk, including geriatric people and people with co-morbid conditions, are being surveyed and tested every day to lower the fatality rate and for early detection.

People who came in close contact with the virus-hit patients would be tested and quarantined and a medical officer and a health officer will now be deployed to each ward of the city to carry out the on-ground containment measures. Along with that, the corporation would install a control room in every zone in the city and the staff from the education department would be stationed in these control rooms in the zones to aid the residents at a hand reach.

Previously, the city had one control room which was functioning at the headquarters of the Chennai Corporation. The reports stated that mobile applications will be in place at every monitoring level with the view of sticking to the transparency and the health officer, sanitary inspector, monitoring authorities would be mandated to disclose the report of the status at their zones in the applications.

Adding to that, the corporation has appointed engineers to oversee the containment zones and people who are under the home quarantine. The civic body would also deploy volunteers in these areas to ensure that the quarantined people refrain from hopping out unnecessarily and the public works department has also been taking the list of institutions to affirm that the city has more than 15,000 beds to treat the COVID-19 patients. 

Chennai Corporation Commissioner Prakash asserted that the administration has been rolling out the containment measures to break the chain of transmission and reduce the spread among the vulnerable people. According to the civic body, Chennai has 15 zones of which Zone 5- Royapuram has more cases with 4,584 followed by Zone 4-Tondiarpet (3584), Zone 9- Teynampet (3291), Zone 10- Kodambakkam (2966).

As of Thursday, Chennai has recorded 27,398 cases so far including  1,407 cases that were reported on Thursday while Tamil Nadu has reported 38,716 cases so far and the state's tally is the second-highest in India after Maharashtra, which has reported 97,648 cases, according to the Union Health Ministry.