The Commissioner of the Chennai Corporation has blamed the lack of sufficient information from private labs about coronavirus samples they have tested, as a cause for overlooking residents who are positive within city limits. The civic body has stated that untraced patients become a source of infection to many others as well as they do not get the necessary treatment for the infection.
“The line list provided by the private labs is incomplete due to which some of the positive patients could not be traced. As a result of this, untraced patients will be a source of infection to many others as well as they will not be able to get proper treatment if they do not know about their result status properly,” Commissioner G Prakash said in a notification to private labs in the city.
The notification listed details that have to be collected from individuals who are being tested. The cases that test positive are usually reported to the Department of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Health and Family Welfare Department and the Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC).
“Under these circumstances, all the labs are hereby instructed to collect the complete address of current place of residence along with door number, correct street name, area name, pincode and Aadhaar number. They should verify the phone number by calling the given number before accepting it. If a suspected person does not have Aadhaar number and the sample has been taken, they shall be placed under quarantine till the results are declared,” the notification stated.
The civic body's insistence on getting identification proof in labs comes just a day after the Tamil Nadu government made Aadhaar number compulsory for grooming and haircuts in salons and spas. Similar details including names, phone numbers and addresses are expected to be collected from customers.
The effort to strengthen contact tracing comes at a time when the city has recorded over 1,000 cases for four consecutive days. Tamil Nadu has averaged between 10,000 to 13,000 tests a day with a significant number of tests conducted in Chennai.
The state reported 1,244 new cases of coronavirus on Wednesday, taking its total to 25, 872. Meanwhile, the death toll reached 208, with 11 people dying of the virus on June 3.
Chennai district, as usual, recorded the maximum cases in the state with 1012 patients on Wednesday.