COVID cases tailing off now in Chennai, RO below 1- Residents and health authorities happy
Posted on: 26/May/2021 9:19:38 AM
The residents of Chennai have now got a reason to rejoice in this Coronavirus pandemic!!
The Covid-19 cases in the city of Chennai have been shrinking quickly now and this has been revealed by the RO or basic reproduction number for Covid-19 infection, an important epidemiological indicator. In Chennai, RO has gone below 1 and it is 0.9 now. In the state of TN, except for a few districts belonging to western and southern regions, RO is inching close to one.
It must be noted that RO indicates how many Covid-19 cases an infected person would generate. For example if RO is 2 then each infected person would generate 2 other infections.
According to Dr. Prabhdeep Kaur, deputy director of NIE, with any RO value above one then the infection would increase and it would spread rapidly through the population. She hinted that if the effective R is reduced below one then the cases would come down. Now along with the steady fall in R value there is a dramatic drop in the Covid-19 cases in Chennai. In Chennai on 13th May 2021, the number of fresh or new Covid-19 cases dropped below 7000 mark to 6991 and on 24th May 2021 the number of fresh cases dropped below 5000 to 4986.
According to Dr. T.S. Selvavinayagam, DPH, the indication of falling curve became clear with the fall in the TPR in Chennai. He added that the average test positivity rate that was between 22 and 21 earlier in May month has dropped below this week. In other districts like Coimbatore, Tiruppur and Theni etc the RO is more than the state average of 1.08 and TPR is around the 30s mark. In these districts, 3 out of every 10 persons are positive and TPR is more than 20 in 15 other TN districts now.
