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Central team to visit Zika hotspots in district
The Hindu
Directive to step up testing across State
The Central team that was rushed to the State capital to take stock of the Zika infection outbreak held preliminary talks with health officials on Sunday. The visit assumed importance with the number of infected people going up to 18 amid concerted vector control efforts made by the district authorities including eradication of mosquito breeding sites. The team is expected to visit various places in the district that have reported Zika cases during the next few days. The six-member team led by Ruchi Jain, public health specialist at the Regional Office for Health and Family Welfare here, urged the State health authorities to intensify prevention and control measures for the disease. While proposing strategies for containing the spread of the infection, the team also called for stepping up testing across the State. They also recommended special precautions for pregnant women.![](/newspic/picid-1269750-20250217064624.jpg)
When fed into Latin, pusilla comes out denoting “very small”. The Baillon’s crake can be missed in the field, when it is at a distance, as the magnification of the human eye is woefully short of what it takes to pick up this tiny creature. The other factor is the Baillon’s crake’s predisposition to present less of itself: it moves about furtively and slides into the reeds at the slightest suspicion of being noticed. But if you are keen on observing the Baillon’s crake or the ruddy breasted crake in the field, in Chennai, this would be the best time to put in efforts towards that end. These birds live amidst reeds, the bulrushes, which are likely to lose their density now as they would shrivel and go brown, leaving wide gaps, thereby reducing the cover for these tiddly birds to stay inscrutable.