Although the central districts continued to report a high positivity rate for COVID-19, health officials here say that it was on the downward trend over the past few days. Official sources in the districts said that the decline in cases will reflect in the positivity rate only after the cases report a steady decline for over a week.
In Tiruchi, the positivity rate was around 15% over the last week, senior officials said. “The number of cases while declining overall, continues to spread in the rural parts of the district. There are pockets where cases continue to spread,” an official said.
The district administration is taking a 10-day average in hotspots to keep track of the trend in cases, the official said. “If 100 cases is the average, the following week we see 150, that means that there is an increasing trend and we will ramp up testing in the area to contain the spread,” the officials said.
Deputy Director of Health Services S. Ram Ganesh said that the Health Department was also increasing vaccine administration to contain the spread of the infection. “If we identify a hotspot, we quickly arrange camps to vaccinate the neighbouring localities. This way even if it does spread, mortality rate will be low,” he said.
In other districts in the region, the number of cases saw a sharp increase over the last week but was on a declining trend over the recent days. Karur had reported nearly 24% positivity rate last week, but had a marked dip of 13% on Saturday.
In Thanjavur, where the number of cases reported a slight dip over the last couple of weeks, the positivity rate was at 14%. Collector M. Govinda Rao said that the district recorded a positivity rate of as high as 20%, but there was an apparent downward trend. The district administration had increased testing to around 6,500 samples per day.
“We have set up 35 screening centres, including 14 government hospitals, and primary healthcare centres. Mobile screening camps were also introduced wherein doctors and healthcare workers travel across the district, especially to the rural parts where there is an increase in cases,” Mr. Rao said. As many as 5,000 volunteers, equipped with thermal scanners and pulse oximeters, had also been deployed to conduct door-to-door testing, he added.
