Number of fever survey workers to be reduced as daily cases in Chennai dips below 200

Chennai

Chennai: As the daily number of  COVID cases in the city came down to around200, the Greater Chennai Corporation has decided to cut the number of feversurvey workers (FSW) by one third.

"The GCC has been implementing house to house surveysas one of the key strategies for the control of COVID. These workers have beenvisiting the houses regularly and finding the ILI (influenza-like illness)cases early. COVID samples have been taken and the positive cases have beenfollowed up by these workers. In addition to that, the FSWs are being used forother COVID related activities. Currently, 5,527 workers are working for feversurveillance," a Chennai Corporation special council resolution said.

The resolution added that for the past few weeks, the numberof cases has been consistently low and it is maintained below 200 per day. Thesustained low number of cases necessitated the change in strategy as the ILIsurveillance could be done through the facilities and the number of workers canbe reduced, as per the resolution.

"However the workers are being used for otheractivities. The fever survey workers could be renamed as 'multipurpose COVIDworkers'. They may be used for sample collection, RT-PCR entry, follow-up ofcases and vaccination," the resolution said.

The civic body estimates 1,400 workers to be retained tocarry out the COVID-19 related works. All the core city zones have beenallotted more than 100 workers. The 1,400 workers include 14 workers, who willbe deployed at Secretariat and Koyambedu market.

The retrenchment will be carried out based on the scoring ofthe workers' performance. The workers, who have high scores will be retained asper the requirement.

The workers will be ranked as per their attendance, ILIidentification, positive case home monitoring, NCD (Non-Communicable Disease)case identification and register maintenance nice. Each will have 10 marks.