Fresh cases are being reported in places including Chennai and its neighbouring districts and cities such as Coimbatore and Madurai. Tamil Nadu is recording around 200 cases of dengue a day.
Cases are being reported across cities including the Chennai belt (Tiruvallur and Kancheepuram), Coimbatore, and Madurai. A. The numbers are not doubling or tripling, which usually happens in an outbreak. “We have specifically instructed staff to increase the number of tests for dengue for better surveillance and patient management. Dr. “We are analysing the case trend, whether increase or decrease or static, and number of laboratory tests conducted. We are also monitoring fever triaging, patient management, and discharge policy. Patients are being categorised as having mild, moderate, or severe symptoms and treated appropriately. Right now, the severity of infections is less. Fogging operations and source reduction measures, along with work taken up by DBCs, are being supervised.
“We are seeing nearly 200 cases a day. There are over 4,500 government and private laboratories in the State, he added.
Officials of the Directorate of Public Health (DPH) and Preventive Medicine said the caseload remained steady and was not at outbreak proportions. Somasundaram, Director of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, said cases had not risen exponentially, with the numbers remaining broadly steady. Right now, there is a static trend in the number of dengue cases, and we are expecting the cases to decline soon,” he said. This could partly be due to a “natural bias” with these areas having more hospitals and testing facilities, Dr. Somasundaram said. This is so we don’t miss a case, and when samples are tested, we can identify pockets of cases or clusters, which are likely to bring about an outbreak,” he said. Somasundaram said while preventive measures had been intensified, they had been holding daily monitoring meetings with District Health Officers via video conferencing. We are also looking at creating awareness among the public,” he said.
