City gets a breather as doubling time increases

According to the data released by the Corporation, Royapuram has registered 57.1 days of doubling time. Meanwhile, Tondiarpet and Thiru Vi Ka Nagar zone have registered doubling time of 32.7 and 32.4 days respectively. Teynampet has a doubling time of 32.2 days. Overall, Chennai's doubling is 25.4 days. The civic body has calculated the doubling rate based on the cases reported in the week that ended on July 6.

"Doubling time is dynamic and it informs us about the impact of the interventions such as lockdown, testing, surveillance and others. Usually, we calculate the doubling time considering the last seven days into account for COVID-19. This means, the situation getting improved and we are taking more time to get the same number of cases," a Chennai Corporation official said.

Fortuitously, all the zones in the city have registered more than 20 days of doubling time, least being 20.2 days in Alandur. The improvement of the situation could be ascertained by comparing the doubling time registered during the months of March and April. In the week between March 22 and March 28, Chennai's doubling time was less than 5 days. After a small spike, close to 20 days during mid-April, the curve again plummeted to around five days before reaching 24.4 days on July 6. After June 30, there was no dip in the doubling time, most of the zones, including Royapuram and Thiru Vi Ka Nagar, have witnessed a steep rise of doubling time after the complete lockdown was imposed. On the other hand, doubling time has decreased to 27.4 days from around 120 days during mid-April. Interestingly, all the 15 zones in Chennai, as well as the entire city, have registered better doubling rate during the mid-April only to record downward curve until the complete lockdown.

Till Wednesday morning, Royapuram had recorded 9,183 cases and Teynampet had recorded 7,879 cases. Thiru Vi Ka Nagar had recorded 5,823 cases. On the other hand, 67 per cent of the infected persons in the city had recovered from the virus and only around 22,000 patients are under treatment.