Local people demand complete closure of corona hotspot Koyambedu market
Chennai: With Chennai’s eruption of coronavirus cases being linked to the Koyambedu vegetable market, local residents are demanding strong steps to enforce social distancing there.
Ten days after Deccan Chronicle reported on the situation at the market, the Chennai City Corporation’s commissioner G. Prakash said 65 per cent of the fresh cases reported from Chennai were from six wards linked to the market.
Principal secretary J Radhakrishnan, the special officer to tackle Covid-19 cases in Chennai, told Deccan Chronicle that the Chennai Metro Development Authority (CMDA) has closed the retail segment of the market including flower and fruit shops. The wholesale segment will continue to operate.
After nailing the Koyambedu market as the superspreader of Covid 19, the Chennai City Corporation has identified four more high-risk zones.
One of the corporation zones, Ambattur, had 42 cases till Sunday morning, most of them linked to a man who was a platform vendor selling vegetables at the Koyambedu market. Thirteen people including his family and neighbours have tested positive now, according to an official who chose to remain anonymous.
Of the 69 cases reported from the Valsaravakkam zone, about half of them were linked to the Koyambedu market.
“All these cases were people who were shop owners, vendors and workers at the Koyambedu market or their family members living here,” said another official.
Chennai currently has 1007 active Covid-19 cases and 98 per cent of them are asymptomatic, according to the commissioner G. Prakash.
Deccan Chronicle had reported on April 19 that vendors in the market had encroached upon the footpaths, resulting in the overcrowding of customers. Most of the vendors and many of the customers were seen wearing no masks and there was no social distancing mainatained.
The 300-acre Koyambdu market complex, as per details available with the CMDA, hosts about 3154 shops that sell vegetables, fruits and flowers. In the pre-corona era, the market had at least one lakh daily visitors.
V. Rama Rao, a social worker from Nanganallur, demanded a shutdown of the market for a fortnight. Alternatively, vegetable shops could be set up in vacant lands in all 15 zones of the corporation.
