Kerala: Containment fails to tame coronavirus in coastal clusters in Thiruvananthapura

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The oversight from health department to completely ignore coastal areas from strategies for surveillance and testing until Poonthura happened is now making the team work harder day by day to check the transmission. The extended containment strategy in coastal areas may have smothered cross-village spread however neighbourhood transmission owing to unrestrained internal mobility has resulted in fresh cases even in clusters where the first bout was reported at least three weeks ago.
Anchuthengu reported 141 cases in July month with cluster of cases emerging by the second week of July. Even after three weeks, the first six days of August saw over 300 cases from Anchuthengu. This happened in a place where nearly 150 positive cases were isolated, as many number or more contacts were put under observation and wards were declared as critical containment zones. The present crop of positive cases which have been reported in August would mean that they may have got exposed hardly a week ago; indicating there are still live sources of transmission and people are getting exposed to such risks of infection.
Beemapally had just around 100 cases throughout July. The area was mostly under lockdown and so were the people who got infected and their contacts. In August Beemapally has so far recorded 41 cases in first six days and two days reported 15 and 13 cases. All these cases hint at evident prevalence of virus and for all the containment and restrictions; the spread goes unchecked.
Even Poonthura which first gave the rude awakening to the capital on community spread had over 700 cases in July. The daily number of cases has come down significantly mainly because tests have been cut down and even then there were days in the first week of August when Poonthura had 9 and 14 cases a day and already 26 cases were reported in 6 days here this month. Poovar which also crossed 100 in July has already got 40 cases in 6 days and Puthukurichi which had 64 cases in July has reported 17 cases already this month.
"It's a fact that transmission is still happening in coastal belt. The containment may have worked in preventing spread of infection from one coastal village to another. When it comes to household and neighbourhood transmission, there is a limit to which an authority can intervene. If new cases have to stop, people have to act of their own accord. The fact is that even with lesser number of tests we are still getting 10 or more cases from cluster which had actually developed in the first or second week of July,'' said an official associated with Covid management in the district.
The health department had employed special squads in Poonthura specifically to restrict internal mobility. It worked to an extent but not fully given the emergence of fresh cases from Poonthura even after a month of confirming community transmission. Pulluvila and Karumkulam which have been major clusters in the district after Poonthura are also reporting isolated cases despite the strictest containment measures in place.