Out of the 100 wards in Madurai Corporation, 100% vaccination has been achieved in a few wards against COVID-19. In wards where people are reluctant, the cases were slightly increasing, said Corporation Commissioner K.P. Karthikeyan here on Thursday.
Speaking to The Hindu, the Commissioner said that most of the wards in urban parts of Madurai city had taken over 50 % vaccination (both the doses), while some among them (small wards) had almost reached 100 % vaccination.
The focus was to contain the spread locally. “We have been doing door-to-door checks in residential areas, where complaints of fever and other ailment are coming in,” he said and added that reluctant people were given counselling about the vaccine.
On the dengue cases, Dr Karthikeyan said that when compared with last year or the previous years, the situation was well under control now.
Attributing it to the fogging operation carried out much earlier in low lying areas and pumping out stagnating rain water and among others, the Commissioner said that they would intensify fogging in wards and streets, which were thickly populated.
On the one hand, educating the people was being done to keep their surroundings dry and clean from unwanted waste / garbage piling up, he also said that the mass cleaning drive of channels - both major and minor in the city had helped to a great extent in keeping the dengue at a distance.
The Commissioner also said that they have been dropping oil balls in the open channels after the debris were removed. The Corporation had recently procured mobile fogging machines, which could be used in small stretches and by-lanes more effectively.
The Health department officials said that they were sprinkling mosquito larvicidal oils (MLO) in channels as it effectively discouraged the adult mosquitoes from laying eggs. Moreover, the oil helped in destruction of breeding in contaminated water.
