In the last 14 days, 1,15,332 persons who had travelled from 30 countries that have reported cases of monkeypox were screened on arrival at the four international airports in Tamil Nadu, according to Health Minister Ma. Subramanian.
Inspecting the ongoing screening measures at the Chennai airport on Friday, he said so far no case of monkeypox had been reported in the State.
“In Tamil Nadu, we started to screen persons arriving from the affected countries at all airports, particularly the international airports in Chennai, Coimbatore, Madurai and Tiruchi, since May 20,” he told reporters.
“A total of 630 flights have arrived since May 20. A total of 1,15,332 travellers were screened at the four airports. Of these, 472 flights arrived in Chennai and 90,504 travellers were screened,” he added.
He said that based on suspicion, the sample lifted from a person in a private hospital in Chennai after developing unusual blisters on the face was sent to NIV, Pune and it tested negative for monkeypox.
Screening for COVID-19
The Minister said that 2% random RT-PCR testing of passengers continued in the State. In a day, 120 persons of the nearly 6,000 travellers arriving in Chennai were subjected to RT-PCR test. Apart from this, all passengers go through thermal screening.
He said on Friday, daily COVID-19 cases were fewer than the previous day in the State. Noting that cases in the institutional clusters were coming down, he said that of the 9,000 RT-PCR tests done on the campus of IIT-Madras, 237 were found to be positive. “As of now, there is no COVID-19 case on IIT Madras campus. At Sathya Sai Medical College, 74 persons were positive of the total 1,400 students. All of them are doing well. In Anna University, all students were tested and there were 23 positive cases alone as of now. All of them are asymptomatic,” he said.
In VIT Kelambakkam, 6,150 samples were lifted. Till Thursday night, there were 196 cases. Three students who had tested positive in the beginning tested negative for the infection
The Minister said that precautionary steps were being taken as family clusters were reported now . “A majority of the samples were of the BA.2 sub-lineage. There were 10 to 11 cases of BA.3 sub-variant of Omicron. However, the infection is not life-threatening,” he said. He said there was a need to be cautious as transmission was rapid.
“We have brought Chennai, Chengalpattu, Kancheepuram and Tiruvallur under intensive surveillance,” he said. He stressed on the need to stay cautious as daily new cases crossed 4,000 in India.
He said that Food Safety teams had taken up intensive monitoring of the quality of meat used in hotels across the State. Hotels without proper storage facility and hotels with storage facilities but stored meat for longer duration of 15 to 20 days are being monitored. “In one week, there has been intensive monitoring in eight to 10 districts,” he added.
Health Secretary J. Radhakrishnan was present.
