Centre warns of spillover of Covid-19 cases on districts with low caseload
As largely rural states such as Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha, West Bengal report a high number of Covid-19 cases, Centre on Friday turned its attention to districts with moderate and low caseload to avoid a spillover of infections from high burden areas.
As India reported an increase of more than 50,000 cases for three consecutive days, the Health Ministry said districts and cities with moderate or low incidence of Covid-19 cases have been asked to strengthen contact tracing, carry out door to door surveillance among persons prone to severe acute respiratory illness or influenza-like illnesses.
Health Minister Harsh Vardhan chaired the 19th meeting of the Group of Ministers (GoM) on the Covid-19 response and issued directions for effective implementation of containment measures across the disease-hit region.
Sujeet Kumar Singh, Director National Centre for Disease Control briefed the GoM on measures such as stricter perimeter control in containment zones, deployment of Rapid Antigen Tests, door-to-door search and assessment of true disease burden through sero-surveys that were taken to reduce the mortality rate in high caseload cities such as Pune, Thane, Bengaluru and Hyderabad.
Health Ministry officials said contact tracing of a Covid-19 patient within 72 hours of detection of infection was an effective way to control the spread of the disease.
Out of the 739 districts in India, 50 districts contribute 80% of Covid-19 cases across the country and the spread of the disease could be controlled by following an aggressive ‘track-test-treat’ policy, they said.
Singh told the GoM that overall recovery rate for India was 64.54% with the highest being recorded by Delhi at 89.08%, followed by Haryana at 79.82%, while Karnataka with 39.36% had the lowest recovery rate in the country.
Bihar crossed the 50,000 cases mark on Friday as it reported the highest single-day spike of 2,986 cases. Uttar Pradesh also reported its highest single day increase of 4,453 new cases taking the total tally to 85,261. Odisha and West Bengal also reported high numbers of new infections.
The ministry suggested rolling out information, education and communication (IEC) campaigns and community involvement as the way forward to control the spread of the disease.
A DH Covid-19 Tracker put the total confirmed cases at 16,53,524 and the total deaths at 35,841 at 8:30 p.m. on Friday.
India has 5,55,550 Covid-19 patients under active medical supervision of which only 0.28% patients were on ventilators, 1.61% needed ICU support and 2.32% were on oxygen support, the ministry said.
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