A pilot project would be conducted in Madurai district to identify high-risk areas where people vulnerable to contract COVID-19 will be higher in the event of a third wave of the pandemic, said Finance Minister P. T. R. P. Thiagarajan here on Tuesday.
He was addressing mediapersons, along with Minister for Commercial Taxes and Registration P Moorthy, after attending a review meeting with Collector S. Aneesh Sekar and Corporation Commissioner K. P. Karthikeyan. Mr. Thiagarajan said that once it was completed, merits and demerits of the pilot project would be explained to the Chief Minister who will decide whether it could be implemented across the State.
In many countries, the third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic had been reported. So, as a precautionary measure, the problem areas during the second wave should be identified and eliminated. The government had already made efforts to increase the number of oxygen beds, ICU beds, oxygen concentrators and oxygen generation plants in government hospitals.
In areas with higher population of people with antibodies, the chances of COVID-19 spread, if there was a third wave, would be lower. Similarly, areas with higher COVID-19 vaccination coverage, and lower proportion of elderly people or vulnerable population, would also have lower risk.
So, the pilot project would aim to pinpoint areas that had high risks. The experts of the Economic Advisory Council had studied similar exercises conducted in many countries and had given suggestions to the Chief Minister.
Door-to-door screening in rural areas helped in finding out the population of elderly people and vulnerable population.
Nearly, five lakh people had been inoculated in the district. Since they registered their names through CoWIN portal, their address and other details were available only with the Union government. “Hence, to have a local database, we are going to collect details from the vaccination centres in the district from Wednesday,” Mr. Thiagarajan added.
