Curbs Ebb But TN Keeps Fingers Crossed as Chennai Market Emerges as Fresh Cluster With 320 Cases

Chennai: A primary fruits and vegetables wholesale market in Chennai has turned out to be a large coronavirus cluster, a discovery over the last week in the southern metropolis which has caused concern among lawmakers and health officials amid a lockdown relaxation in the red zone district.

The Koyambedu wholesale market as a cluster has recorded 320 Covid-19 cases so far, which means the numbers may rise when testing is extended to primary relatives of the patients. Origins of outbreaks in distant districts such as Cuddalore are being traced to Koyambedu. A senior police official directly tracking the cluster said the number of people pursued for testing exceeds 7,000, nearly five times that of the Nizamuddin cluster in Tamil Nadu.

“There are at least 3,000 shops in Koyambedu. Most of these have one owner and two assistants. Due to the fact that work goes on till night, the workers at Koyambedu sleep there. This makes it an ideal ground for coronavirus spread,” the official said.

The method of tracing for Koyambedu is more complicated than that used for the Nizamuddin cluster, in which phone-tracing was an effective tool. In this case, those originally infected in Koyambedu have now branched off to several districts in the state, which means coordinated action among district administrations is necessary.

“For this cluster too, we are relying on phone calls made by Covid-19 patients to net those who may have come in contact with them,” said the officer.

The Koyambedu cluster is also compounded by the fact that it is linked to an essential commodity: vegetables and fruits. In Ashok Nagar, a locality not far from Koyambedu, vegetable vendors who ferried the goods have tested positive and passed on the disease to more than 24 people. In Kundrathur, a primary Covid-19 patient had passed it on to 22 people in the locality, all tracing back to Koyambedu. “This cluster is a huge challenge. We have to complement contact-tracing with aggressive testing. Tracing the people a vegetable vendor gets in contact with is a laborious process,” the official said.

Senior officers monitoring the situation said there are three clusters in Tamil Nadu, including those of the Tablighi Jamaat, Koyambedu wholesale market and hospitals. The state has witnessed a steady spike in coronavirus cases with 266 recorded on Sunday.