CHENNAI: After 74 days, the seven-day average test positivity rate (TPR) for Covid-19 in Chennai has dropped below 5% for June 5-11 period, shows city corporation data.
TPR is the number of cases that return positive for every 100 samples tested.
As per ICMR and WHO guidelines, TPR below 5% indicates a slow spread of infection and adequate testing.
TPR last went below 5% in Chennai during March 23 to March 29 period.
It reached a high of 23.26% between May 10 and May 16 and has been dropping since.
After 73 days, fresh cases in Chennai dropped below 1,000 to 989 on Saturday.
As of June 11, only one zone in the city (Anna Nagar) had more than 1,000 active cases.
The total active cases in Chennai is now 10,842 which is 2% of all cases recorded so far in the city.
Manali has the lowest number of active cases at 231.
Meanwhile, Tamil Nadu added 374 deaths and 15,108 new cases to the state registry.
After discharging 27,463 people, there were 1.62 lakh patients under treatment for the viral infection, including 18,274 in Coimbatore and 9,838 from Chennai.
While 815 people tested positive on March 29, the city saw its highest single-day count of 7,564 on May 12.
The city corporation was testing around 14,000 to 15,000 people every day in March.
Around 30,000-32,000 people are being tested now per day.
Corporation commissioner Gagandeep Singh Bedi on Saturday said the civic body will continue to test more people as more relaxation will take effect from Monday.
The civic body will be conducting tests in crowded and enclosed spaces such as fruit and vegetable markets, meat shops and fish stalls and malls as well, a senior GCC official said.
Another strategy is targeted vaccination of vendors in these places to counter the spread of infection.
Another official said the civic body has also started keeping tabs on influenza-like-illness (ILI) cases reported in private hospitals, people taking scans at standalone scan centres and those who buy fever and flu drugs in pharmacies.
“A list of these people is regularly collected from these centres for which officials have been earmarked and these people are being tested,” the official said.