Chennai, May 11 (IANS): The Greater Chennai Corporation reeling under the spike in Covid-19 cases over the past few days is planning to rope in 2,000 more volunteers to the existing 2,000 who are monitoring the number of cases, discharge from hospitals and their primary contacts.

Over the past 14 days Chennai city has 82,140 new Covid cases and more than 70 per cent of them are in home isolation. These patients are waiting for the visits of healthcare staff and sanitary workers.

In addition to these cases, 5,000 patients who have tested positive before April 26 are still in home isolation. International organisations like the World Health Organisation (WHO) and Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have already recommended 14 day home isolation after a person tests positive for Covid infection.

Patients with mild infection or moderate infection are in home isolation all the 14 days and those with moderate and heavy infection continue to be in home isolation even after being discharged from hospitals.

With such a huge volume of patients to be monitored, the Greater Chennai Corporation is struggling to do surveillance and patient management. This is mainly due to the fact that the number of focus volunteers is only 2,000 and the number of fever surveillance workers is 12,000. This will lead to only 10 focus volunteers per ward and the fever surveillance workers about 60 per ward which is grossly inadequate.

A health official with Chennai corporation while speaking to IANS said, "During the same time in 2020 when the number of active cases was less than half of what we have now, the corporation had 15 focus volunteers per ward and hence we have to enhance the number of focus volunteers."

The newly appointed Greater Chennai Corporation Commissioner, Gagan Singh Bedi who conducted an inspection of the ward offices checked the attendance registers of focus volunteers and fever surveillance workers. While speaking to media persons he said, "The number of Volunteers can be increased as the number of cases remains high".

Corporation officials said that other than facing shortage of volunteers, several sanitary inspectors and health officials with the corporation have tested positive and hence there is a total shortage of persons to monitor the cases.