Days after the announcement of the Greater Chennai Corporation on the COVID-19 testing protocols raised more concerns among the residents in the city, Tamil Nadu's new health secretary J Radhakrishnan has issued a clarification on how the city would handle the people who are undergoing testing for the viral infection, amid soaring high cases of the pandemic.

While addressing the reporters after succeeding Beela Rajesh and taking over the role of health secretary, which he held for over seven years previously, Radhakrishnan said that people, who are tested positive, would be admitted to the hospital or to the COVID-19 care center and if the affected patients have the facilities for home quarantine, they would be advised to be at home and if people test negative and carry symptoms of the virus, they would be instructed to stay under home quarantine for 14 days.

For people who tested negative and with no symptoms, they won't be directed to be under quarantine as these are the parameters to streamline the testing in Chennai. The city has become a huge challenge for the government to contain the spread and it has been preparing to pace up the testing among the residents to identify the carriers at the early stage to prevent the vulnerable population.

As part of the testing protocols, the Greater Chennai Corporation has, on June 11, issued a press notification that spurred the controversy and concerns among the residents. In the press release,  the corporation said that anyone who undergoes COVID-19 testing in the city would be kept under 14-day quarantine along with their family members and the announcement has perplexed the residents on whether they ought to go under quarantine if they take a test. 

However, Health Secretary Radhakrishnan said that it was a precautionary announcement by the corporation and he now has issued a clarification on the testing protocols through which it can be learned that not everyone would be kept under quarantine upon testing. 

According to the corporation, Chennai currently has 15 zones and as of Saturday morning, Zone 5- Royapuram has more cases in the city with 4821 followed by Zone 4- Tondiarpet (3761), Zone 9 -Teynampet (3464), and Zone 10- Kodambakkam (3108) cases. On Friday, the city has reported the highest single-day spike of 1,479 cases as the city is nearing the hit the tally of 29,000. According to the reports, Chennai has tested 1.22 lakh samples until June 7.

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