Over 35% of TN coronavirus cases linked to a market in Chennai

Some regions of Andhra Pradesh, on the border with Tamil Nadu, have also reported cases linked to Koyambedu, and many migrants working in the market returned to their home state in the last week of April.

On April 27, the owner of a hair salon near the Koyambedu Market, a wholesale vegetable and fruit market in Chennai, was one of the first positive cases of Covid-19 in the area. Since then, more than 3,000 cases have been reported on the market. In fact, more than 35 percent of reported cases in Tamil Nadu so far have been traced to the Koyambedu market. As of Wednesday, the state’s total case count was 9,227, of which 4,089 were linked to arrivals from other countries and states, and another 1,365 were linked to the Tablighi Jamaat congregation in Delhi in March. Most of the remaining cases date back to the Koyambedu market group.

Some regions of Andhra Pradesh, on the border with Tamil Nadu, have also reported cases linked to Koyambedu, and many migrants working in the market returned to their home state in the last week of April.

Chennai, which had 906 cases on April 30 (mostly linked to the Tablighi cluster), touched 5,262 cases on Wednesday.
A senior public health official said the Koyambedu market group “exploded” in such a way that “not only Chennai, but several other districts such as Ariyalur and Perambalur, where the case count was in the single digits until the last week of April were also affected. “

In the period from April 30 to May 12, Ariyalur, a rural district south of Chennai, saw an increase from 7 cases to 344 cases; Perambalur saw a jump from 9 to 192, all related to the workers returning from Koyambedu.

In the same period, two neighboring districts of the Chennai city region, Chengalpattu and Tiruvallur, saw their case counts jump from 78 to 391 and from 55 to 467, respectively.

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Health department officials participating in the massive contact search exercise said most of them had ties to the Koyambedu market: vendors, drivers, workers and those who visited the market daily, and their secondary contacts.

“The Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority (CMDA) should have taken action in March itself. It was too late when they finally decided to evict the retailers from the market and moved all the fruit and flower vendors to another location (on April 28). Hundreds of people who suddenly lost their jobs were forced to travel home in different cities and towns. No one assumed that hundreds of them would be carriers of Covid-19, “said a senior health official.

He said that the massive tracing of contacts of 7,500 people in different districts, including Chennai, and the aggressive testing of all immediate contacts, led to a sudden increase in the case count.

The daily count of cases in the Ariyalur, Cuddalore and Perambalur districts was single digits until early May; These regions have seen an increase in the past week. In Chennai, the doubling time was reduced to five days on Monday: it is 6 days in the rest of the state, while the national average is 12.6 days.

Of the 509 new cases reported statewide in the past 24 hours, 380 were from Chennai. The state’s death rate remains low, at .69% (the national average is 3.25%) with 64 deaths through Wednesday.

“The number of deaths increases when the infection begins to be reflected in the vulnerable population. We should be preparing for that too. If it is a reality that we should learn to live with the virus, it is also important that we need to have more facilities to wash our hands everywhere. ” said K Kolandaswamy, who retired from the position of director of public health on April 30.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami said on Wednesday that there was no need to panic. Underscoring the state’s death rate, the discharge rate (27 percent), and increasing evidence, he said the pandemic was under control. Citing experts, he said the numbers may “increase” even more before the state sees a downward curve.

Addressing a meeting of senior officials, he blamed vendors at the Koyambedu market for the outbreak. He said they had refused to cooperate with the government’s plan to move them to a new site, and that they had also failed to follow the protocol on social distancing and wearing masks.

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