The Greater Chennai Corporation has identified 1,979 high risk areas, where people are vulnerable to COVID-19 infection.
Street mapping of the high risk areas will begin in all the 15 zones of the city in the first week of June. A few non-governmental organisations have started work on training workers for door-to-door enquiries for mapping vulnerable people.
“The challenge is to connect the vulnerable residents with the sanitation inspectors of the Corporation. Most residents are unwilling to get help from civic workers during the pandemic. Some are scared of even giving samples for testing,” said an official. The civic body is now planning to intensify community intervention with the support of NGOs in such high risk areas.
Rise in numbers
With a rise in the number of Corporation employees testing positive for COVID-19, the work on containment has been affected in a few areas, the officials said. Some new employees recruited for the work had not joined duty, they pointed out.
Lack of manpower resulted in poor coordination among various departments and zonal offices of the Corporation. As a result, there were complaints that many streets had been barricaded although they were not in containment zone.
In many areas, the Corporation had sent NULM workers to create awareness among residents about COVID-19 cases in their streets after putting up barricades.
