Tamil Nadu chief secretary reviews COVID-19 surge, asks authorities to intensify efforts

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Chennai: With election-bound southern state Tamil Nadu also reporting a significant spike in Covid-19 cases over the last 10 days, the Chief Secretary has assessed the situation and asked authorities to intensify prevention efforts and also crackdown on violators of mask-wearing and related Covid-19 safety norms. 

Chief secretary Rajeev Ranjan held a meeting with top officials from the civic authorities, police, health, revenue departments and the district administration. It was stated that the 
reasons for the current spike are public and private events, schools, banks etc. where mask wearing and physical distancing norms are violated, in addition to flouting of home quarantine norms.

To enforce COVID-19 norms and increase efforts towards controlling the pandemic, the chief secretary ordered the violators of COVID-19 protocols be find under the Public health act, it was also added that resumption of temperature screening and availability of sanitizer be ensured at all workplaces, factories and hotels. 

Government authorities have been instructed to ensure that the norms are strictly followed across banks, government and private venues, factories, wedding halls, schools, places of worship, tourist places etc. 

Health department has been asked to conduct fever camps and devise special strategies for areas reporting many cases or case clusters. Monitoring of home quarantined persons would also continue, in line with the previous year. 

Tamil Nadu reported 836 Covid-19 cases on Monday, which took the active cases to 5,149. A total of 8.60 lakh persons have tested positive and 8.42 lakh persons have been discharged following treatment till date. According to the government, the test positivity rate in the state had been brought below 1% in January and February, but now it has risen to 1.2%. However, in big cities such as Chennai and Coimbatore the test positivity rate has gone past 2%, this is at a time when the average daily testing is around 65,000.