Chennai, May 27 (IANS): The Tamil Nadu government has formed a special surveillance team focussing only on rural areas of the western part of the state, especially Coimbatore, Erode and Tirupur districts to prevent spread of the Covid-19 virus.

The M.K.Stalin government in a press release on Thursday said that the special team comprising the panchayat president, panchayat secretary, village administration officer, a nurse and a police official will monitor the cases in rural areas of Coimbatore, Erode and Tirupur among others, where there has been a spike in fresh cases in the last few days.

The state health department has said that the spike specifically in Coimbatore is owing to the large number of small and medium industries functioning there even till 10 days back.

Although over the last one week they pulled down their shutters but it has already led to the industries turning into micro clusters.

In urban Coimbatore most of the Covid-19 cases recorded over the past 10 days have been of industrial workers or their families, according to a health department statement.

Free movement of people ranging from attendants and relatives of patients, auto drivers, cab drivers and ambulance drivers from the hospitals to the residences of the patients have turned into super spreaders.

Several attendants who accompanied patients to hospitals have turned positive.

Rajani UV, who is a Professor of a private medical college "We have cut short the number of attendants to patients and have allowed attendants only in cases where the patients are too old and frail.

"The attendants and ambulance drivers are turning into super spreaders as they go into the housing societies after accompanying the patients."

Bindu Menon, an expert in contagious diseases and working in a research laboratory in Chennai told IANS: "We are optimistic that the cases will come down in Coimbatore and other western regions of Tamil Nadu as it did in Chennai following concentrated measures."

State Health Department is worried over the increase of cases in southern Tamil Nadu including Madurai and Kanyakumari.

Madurai reported more than 1,500 fresh cases on Wednesday and active cases crossed 15,000. Kanyakumari has had more than 1,000 fresh cases per day for the past 10 days and on Wednesday it recorded 1,116 cases.

The Special Covid surveillance teams constituted for rural areas of south Tamil Nadu will also prevent the super spread and strict monitoring of people's and vehicles movement round the clock at the border areas of Kanyakumari district is expected to bear results.