Chennai’s Koyambedu market, the new COVID-19 super spreader?

The Koyambedu Wholesale Market Complex (KWMC), one of the largest vegetable, fruit, and flower markets in the country spread across nearly 300 acres, is emerging as the newest hotspot for COVID-19 infections in Tamil Nadu.

More than 70 people, including vendors, labourers and buyers, who went to the sprawling market campus spread across several districts have tested positive for COVID-19 with the government activating its contact tracing mechanism to trace people who had been to the complex or came in contact with any of the confirmed patients.

While 50 of the 70 are from Chennai alone, 18 people from Ariyalur, two from Villupuram and one from Perambalur districts have also tested positive. While the health bulletin said two cases were recorded in Cuddalore, the district collector said nine people from the Koyambedu cluster have tested positive for the virus.

Officials fear the number of patients from the Koyambedu cluster, as it is being called now, will witness a sharp increase as thousands of people had visited the market in the past one month to buy vegetables and fruits. Also, thousands of people were seen at the market on April 25, the day before the Tamil Nadu government’s intensified lockdown came into force to stock up vegetables and fruits.

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Vendors say the Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority (CMDA) that manages the market should have moved out the retail market to a different place immediately after the lockdown was enforced on March 25, which could have averted the cluster.

District administrations are in the process of tracing wholesale vendors who went to the market to buy supplies --- several hundreds of them have already been quarantined in various places.

“It is emerging as the biggest cluster after a religious congregation that was held in Delhi in March. Tracing people who went to such a sprawling market is not an easy task. But every effort is being taken to identify people who came in contact with positive patients and testing them,” a senior Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC) official told DH.

Cuddalore District Collector V Anbuselvan told DH that nearly 700 people, including 600 of them whose primary engagement is at the Koyambedu market have been quarantined at various facilities in Cuddalore district. “These people have come to the district in the past few days in vans and lorries that carry essential supplies and other modes of transport. Nine people have tested positive on Saturday,” he said. However, the health bulletin painted a different picture saying Cuddalore had just two cases today.

Since positive cases were reported from Koyambedu at the beginning of the week, the collector said, the district administration placed all returning from Chennai under institutional quarantine before testing them.

With the Koyambedu cluster growing day by day, Anbuselvan said even people who have tested negative will be kept under quarantine for 14 days from the date of their arrival. Tiruvallur district superintendent of police P Aravindhan told DH that the police are in the process of collecting information on people who visited the Koyamedu market from the district.

The sprawling campus, which has both retail and wholesale vendors, was not closed even when the entire country went for a lockdown on March 25 as several districts in Tamil Nadu depend on vegetables and fruits that are transported from Koyambedu.

After the first positive case was reported earlier this week, the government closed the retail, fruit and flower market within the complex, while only keeping the wholesale vegetable market open.

“The government should have closed the retail market long back as people come in large numbers there. And, the police should have enforced social distancing in the complex by directing people to the blocks that they wanted to go. Without any proper help, people were forced to go around the whole complex,” a member of the Koyambedu Vegetable Market Association told DH.