Chennai

According to a Chennai Corporation official, most of the cases in the zone are due to narrower streets and dense population in the zone, especially slum areas. “There are around 175 slums in the Royapuram zone, of which 52 are notified slum areas. There were no new cases in the notified slums for nearly a week. Also, no new cases reported from other slum areas for the past two or three days,” the official said.

The official added that there were no new cases in PRN Garden, one of the notified slum areas in the zone which had 53 cases at once, for the past one week. Similarly, Annai Sathyavani Muthu Nagar, where 11 cases were reported from, is free of any new case for the last 20 days.

The official attributed the control of the spread in Royapuram slums to measures like distributing Kabasura Kudineer, disinfection drives and distribution of free masks. “Apart from these measures, we are conducting fever camps and clinics, in which doctors would visit the slum areas and identify persons with influenza-like-illness (ILI). We have also de-congested some slum areas by moving vulnerable people to nearby schools and community centres,” he added.

As per records, Royapuram zone has a population of 7.5 lakh and more than 2 lakh people in the zone live in 175 slums.

Meanwhile, the zone remains the worst affected in the city with 3,717 cases as on Sunday morning. However, 2,014 patients have recovered and there are only 1,663 active cases now.

Apart from the dense population and higher number of slum areas, the civic officials attribute the huge number of cases to the location of Stanley government hospital, Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital, Chennai Central, Egmore railway station, High Court, Kasimedu fishing harbour and several police quarters.

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