The Indian Institute of Technology Madras campus on Thursday emerged as a COVID-19 cluster with 12 persons testing positive for SARS CoV-2.
Health and Family Welfare Secretary J. Radhakrishnan, who visited the campus on Thursday, said that all those who tested positive were doing fine although they were mildly symptomatic. He said the Health Department, along with the Greater Chennai Corporation and the administration of IIT Madras, has begun saturation testing by collecting samples from around 2,000 persons on the campus to proactively identify the cases. He said that adequate containment measures have been put in place keeping a facility with 60 rooms available for isolation.
Reports of positive cases on the campus emerged two days ago. Subsequent testing of contacts and other symptomatic individuals led to the identification of 12 cases.
Stressing that there was no need to panic, Mr. Radhakrishnan highlighted the need to improve compliance with mask rule. He said within the IIT campus the mask compliance was poor and people started wearing masks only after fresh cases were reported. He appealed to those who are not yet fully vaccinated to get vaccinated at the earliest.
He said that although the new XE variant of COVID-19 has not been reported yet in Tamil Nadu, samples collected from IIT Madras will be sent for identification of the variants.
With the IIT campus alone reporting 12 cases so far, he did not rule out the possibility of the number of cases getting reported daily in Tamil Nadu rising marginally in the coming days. He said that the number of tests being conducted daily in the State had been increased. The number of tests would be increased to at least 25,000 a day in the next few days.
