Chennai Vegetable Market, One Of The Largest In Asia, Is India’s Biggest Active Cluster

In a situation like the coronavirus pandemic where the disease is airborne, contact transmission to cluster transmission, and then to community transmission is well known. New cases appearing in different places in diverse ways is an indication of community transmission.

One such case surfaced in Chennai where a female with no travel history was found to be corona positive. Swadi Prabakaran, a medical student tweeted about her mother’s condition and explained how her mother took utmost care and only went out twice a week for essentials but still tested positive for COVID-19. This can only mean that one of the vendors from whom she bought essentials was an asymptomatic corona patient.

My covid-19 experience.
A thread.
I live in Anna Nagar West, Chennai.
Only my mom goes out twice a week to buy groceries within 500 m radius.
She took utmost care by wearing mask and avoiding crowded stores.
But as life is unfair, she got the symptoms on the night of 9 May.

— Swadi Prabakaran (@PrabakaranSwadi) May 13, 2020

On 5th May, Bharath Gupta, a District Collector in Southern India, learned that the Koyambedu market in Chennai city was being temporarily closed. The reason being a number of vendors and labourers at the market tested positive and were being linked to a number of cases in and around Chennai.

Spread over 65 acres in the heart of Chennai, the Koyambedu market is one of the largest in Asia. Wholesale and retail shops selling grains, fruits, vegetables, and flowers draw tens of thousands of buyers every day. Add to that the shop owners, truck drivers, and daily-wage labourers and it amounts to around a hundred thousand people, on average.Now the market is the source of India’s biggest active cluster, with a far-reaching tangled trail. Unsurprisingly, it has sparked a public row over who is to blame, but it has also revealed the challenge of regulating India’s bustling, crowded food markets, where space is a luxury and social distancing a fantasy.

In her Twitter thread, Swadi further said that the hospitals were full of corona positive patients and were waiting in line for further treatment, alongside people who were not corona positive.

She also said that doctors have home-quarantined patients who are at the initial stage of coronavirus, endangering the lives of those who live in the same house.

Health experts say that due to asymptomatic patients the actual number of people infected is highly under-reported. Since the number of people tested is low, there is a high risk of cases going undetected and a rise in community transmission. Things are going to be extremely difficult in crowded areas like vegetable markets and slums