That's only one way to interpret this. There are others, and what Rand says suggests another interpretation.

Something really similar happened to the Blight in EOTW, after the confrontation.

The DO's touch on the world isn't corrupting things naturally. It twists reality.

It seems to me that Rand's full acceptance of his role and nature increases the Wheel's capacity to bring order back. It's not that he is more strongly ta'veren, or has greater powers, it's that what he had become pre-epiphany, and his ties to Shai'tan, undermined the Wheel's capacity to use his ta'veren nature fully. Now we just see what the Wheel can really do to correct the Pattern when a ta'veren like Rand is present. While Rand remains somewhere, the Wheel is able to return an area to its real state. This is further reinforced by the fact a similar phenomenon occurs around people totally caught in Rand's web of destiny, like Elayne. And it's long been observed that things around Egwene take weird turns, as if she too was ta'veren. She isn't, and she doesn't need to be. Rand's web is active through the people closely tied to him, like Egwene. She didn't even feel the pull of Wheel on her in TOM, when everyone else was. I think we just got a hint there that the more the people from Min's "fireflies" Viewing get together, the greater the capacity of the Wheel to affect and correct the Pattern through Rand, Mat, Perrin will become. One of the last time that happened was a Falme, and twisted reality into "miracles" then (the vision of Rand and Ishamael projected in the sky etc.).

So, Rand probably hasn't done anything to those apples. His presence repelled the DO's Touch temporarily, and the Wheel was able to bring back the natural order in fast forward, like what happened with the "fast forward spring" at the end of TEOTW (which took place near Rand alone, this phenomenon didn't happen in the whole world, as far as we were told). Rand in fact had appeared to barely noticed this happened, and when he realized it he mused something like "hmm... my presence will probably hold the DO's touch at bay for a while, so don't dither".

I'm unconvinced Rand's OP strength has increased. I think what he did in TOM, he probably could have done before, had he got the full skills and efficiency of LTT. He had done something similar in TSR, but then he had needed Callandor to make that Shadowspawn-targeting weave. There is good evidence that when you're not skilled enough at some weaves, you could compensate your lack of efficiency by a greater amount of OP to achieve similar results (eg: Androl can weave gateways with a fraction of what it takes someone else to make this weave, one of the Kinswomen has a similar talent for shielding - making extra efficient shields with a fraction of saidar required by someone without her talent/skills at shidelding, the Windfinders can work massive flows people of similar strength can't, women in general can achieve results with much less saidar than it would take a man using saidin to do the same because their weaves are more efficient, etc. ).

We had never seen LTT at his best, channelling-wise, before TOM. Rand going to a personality split and fighting against himself in KOD was still quite impressive, without ian angreal or sangreal.

As for the impression Rand gave, for instance that he could break two shields, made by two circle of thirteen, my take is that his confidence is what gave that wrong impression to the characters (they couldn't know if he could, unless he tried to break the shield and they felt his strength at it. He just ignored their shields, completely). I don't think he really could have broken those shields. He just made a show of demonstrating no fear or even unease at being shielded. He showed the same serenity and absolute confidence in Far Madding, and we know all too well his escape plan relied on Cadsuane's well, not on any miracle (and it was incidentally a massive demonstration of trust in Cadsuane he gave there).