TIRUCHI
The City Corporation on Friday began testing inmates of orphanages and old age homes in the city for COVID-19 after at least 23 persons from an old age home in Kattur tested positive for the viral infection.
The first person to test positive at the St. Anthony’s Home for the Aged was a woman who was taken to the Kattur Primary Healthcare Centre after she slipped and fell in the bathroom, said Sister Arul Anthony, in-charge at the home.
At the PHC, she was asked to get tested for COVID-19. “After the reports showed positive for the woman on Tuesday, samples were lifted from all 108 inmates,” she said.
On Wednesday, six people from the home tested positive and on Thursday 16 people tested positive for the viral infection. The 23 senior citizens include women as old as 98, Sr. Anthony said.
“The management is taken aback by the number of cases emerging from our home. We do not know how they tested positive as not a single individual has stepped out of our home in the last three months,” she said.
The home had no visitors and even the cook was asked to stay on campus so as to not risk infecting the inmates, Sr. Anthony said.
“To avoid the spread among homes and orphanages, we have ordered immediate testing across all the homes within city limits,” S. Sivasubramanian, City Corporation Commissioner, said.
There are nine such homes registered with the civic body and samples were lifted for all of them on Friday, a senior health official said. “There are a few smaller orphanages with less than 10 inmates too. We will test for all of them,” the official said. If inmates of any such homes would like to get tested for the viral infection, they can contact the civic body and health officials will visit them and lift throat swabs.
