CHENNAI: All pharmacies in the city will now, as part of Covid surveillance, have to mandatorily share with the civic body contacts of everyone buying a paracetamol or an Azythromycin, a Greater Chennai Corporation order said on Sunday.
Under the Disaster Management Act, they have been ordered to share the contact details, name, address, symptoms and drugs provided to anyone with influenza like symptoms.
This is in addition to the previous order where private clinics, hospitals and scan centres were asked to share information about patients with fever and other influenza like symptoms.
Now, pharmacies have to send details daily to gccpvtpharmacyreports@chennaicorporation.gov.in.
“We realized many people were buying paracetamol and similar medicines over the counter for fever symptoms and did not get tested.
And the pharmacies also did not inform us about these patients.
To bring them under the ambit of the civic body and to ensure they do not spread the disease to others, we have issued this order.
This way, corporation medical officers and doctors will reach out to them and ensure they are tested.
And if they test positive, they will be isolated and treatment would begin,” said commissioner Gagandeep Singh Bedi.
The order was issued under Section 30(2)(v)(vi) of the Disaster Management Act.
The Tamil Nadu Covid19 regulations, 2020, also stated that every facility should immediately inform all suspected Covid cases to the city health officer of Greater Chennai Corporation.
The corporation has appointed entomologists for each zone to monitor this.
A senior officer said this measure was there last year too but pharmacies didn’t share the data regularly as it was done informally.
“This year all these measures have been brought under the Disaster Management Act.
This way, we have ensured action will be initiated if they do not comply and data will be shared with us daily.
A monitoring system will ensure it is followed up every day.”