The second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic hit Tiruppur district hard in May, as evident by the six-fold rise in active cases and by the near doubling of the death toll within a month.
According to the daily media bulletin issued by the State government, the active cases were 3,168 on May 1 and it increased to 18,295 cases on May 31. The death toll, which was at 239 on May 1, touched 475 deaths on May 31. The overall tally, which was only 26,850 cases in the beginning of the month, crossed the 60,000-mark by the month’s end.
The daily caseload of Tiruppur district crossed the 700-mark on May 10 and crossed the 1,000-mark on May 15. Within the next two weeks, the daily caseload crossed the 2,000-mark with 2,074 cases on May 27, which was the third-highest caseload on that day after that of Coimbatore and Chennai districts. In the last four days of May, the daily caseload has registered a slight dip as 1,373 cases were reported on May 31.
While the active cases were less than 4,000 till May 11, it crossed the 10,000-mark within 10 days as there were 10,132 active cases in the district on May 21. In the next 10 days, it crossed the 18,000-mark. The new deaths reported did not cross 10 deaths till May 20, after which the number of reported deaths increased by nearly three times with the maximum deaths being reported on May 27 (34 deaths).
District Collector K. Vijayakarthikeyan said on Tuesday that the operation of knitwear units during the first half of May was one of the major reasons for the surge in cases.
“In the initial days of the lockdown, there were exemptions for knitwear industries. These [units] were running their operations and we had a situation where two lakh employees were going to work daily,” he told The Hindu.
Another reason was the inadequate monitoring of COVID-19 patients in home isolation and the resulting lack of compliance to safety protocol by patients, causing further spread of the virus.”During the first wave [of the pandemic], we were able to completely monitor [patients in home isolation] as the numbers were relatively lower,” he said.
The district administration has started intensifying preventive measures namely conducting door-to-door fever surveys at rural and urban parts, appointing paid volunteers for every 100 houses, having teams from Revenue Department, local bodies and the police to monitor containment zones and stepping up surveillance in hotels, lodges and other accommodations of industrial workers, Mr. Vijayakarthikeyan said.
Having carried out these measures for over a week, there has been a slight dip in fresh cases and the oxygen beds have been freeing up in hospitals in the past few days, he said. “This shows that we are going in the right direction, but we should not let our guard down and must intensify these measures further,” the Collector said.
