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ABSTRACT: Objectives
To describe the public health strategies and their effect in controlling the COVID-19 pandemic from March to October 2020 in Chennai, India.Setting
Chennai, a densely populated metropolitan city in Southern India, was one of the five cities which contributed to more than half of the COVID-19 cases in India from March to May 2020. A comprehensive community-centric public health strategy was implemented for controlling COVID-19, including surveillance, testing, contact tracing, isolation and quarantine. In addition, there were different levels of restrictions between March and October 2020.Participants
We collected the deidentified line list of all the 192 450 COVID-19 cases reported from 17 March to 31 October 2020 in Chennai and their contacts for the analysis. We defined a COVID-19 case based on the real-time reverse transcriptase-PCR (RT-PCR) positive test conducted in one of the government-approved labs.Outcome measures
The primary outcomes of interest were incidence of COVID-19 per million population, case fatality ratio (CFR), deaths per million, and the effective reproduction number (Rt). We also analysed the surveillance, testing, contact tracing and isolation indicators.Results
Of the 192 450 RT-PCR confirmed COVID-19 cases reported in Chennai from 17 March to 31 October 2020, 114 889 (60%) were males. The highest incidence was 41 064 per million population among those 61-80 years. The incidence peaked during June 2020 at 5239 per million and declined to 3627 per million in October 2020. The city reported 3543 deaths, with a case fatality ratio of 1.8%. In March, Rt was 4.2, dropped below one in July and remained so until October, even with the relaxation of restrictions.Conclusion
The combination of public health strategies might have contributed to controlling the COVID-19 epidemic in a large, densely populated city in India. We recommend continuing the test-trace-isolate strategy and appropriate restrictions to prevent resurgence.
SUBMITTER: M J
PROVIDER: S-EPMC8921469 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Mar
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
M Jagadeesan J Ganeshkumar Parasuraman P Kaur Prabhdeep P Masanam Sriramulu Hemalatha H Sakthivel Manikandanesan M Rubeshkumar Polani P Raju Mohankumar M Murugesan Lakshmidevi L Ganapathi Raajkumar R Srinivasan Mahalakshmi M Sukumar Aswini A Ilangovan Kumaravel K Reddy Madhusudhan M Shanmugam Divyadharshini D Govindasamy Prakash P Murhekar Manoj M
BMJ open 20220314 3
<h4>Objectives</h4>To describe the public health strategies and their effect in controlling the COVID-19 pandemic from March to October 2020 in Chennai, India.<h4>Setting</h4>Chennai, a densely populated metropolitan city in Southern India, was one of the five cities which contributed to more than half of the COVID-19 cases in India from March to May 2020. A comprehensive community-centric public health strategy was implemented for controlling COVID-19, including surveillance, testing, contact t ...[more]