JOIN USCentre sends health teams to Maharashtra, Punjab after spike in daily Covid-19 cases
With Covid-19 numbers zooming past the 18,000-mark on Saturday after a month, the Union Health Ministry once again dispatched two high-level expert teams to the problem states of Maharashtra and Punjab besides asking eight other provinces to follow the time-tested “test-track and treat” strategy to tame the epidemic.
At a review meeting with the states, health officials pointed out that 9 districts in Delhi, 15 in Haryana, 10 in Andhra Pradesh, 10 in Odisha, nine in Himachal Pradesh, seven in Uttarakhand, two in Goa and one in Chandigarh were of concerns as they saw a drop in total tests being conducted, low share of RT-PCR tests, increase in weekly positivity and low number of contact tracing of the Covid-19 positive cases.
“Please continue with the effective strategy of ‘Test Track and Treat’ that had yielded rich dividends at the height of the pandemic,” Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan told the state officials. NITI Ayog member Vinod Paul also attended the meeting.
The states have also been told to improve overall testing in districts reporting a reduction in testing and increase the share of gold-standard RT-PCR tests in districts that are dependent on high levels of antigen testing.
The review was undertaken after a high number of active caseload was being reported from these eight states
The states were told to refocus on surveillance and stringent containment of those areas in the districts that are seeing clusters of cases. Also, it was underlined that the need is to carry out close contact tracing of a minimum of 20 persons per positive case.
Out of 18,327 fresh Covid-19 cases and 108 deaths reported in the last 24 hours, more than 10,000 cases and more than 50 deaths were from Maharashtra, making it the number one problem state where the epidemic is growing rapidly once again.
Punjab is another big cause of worry as it saw the steepest rise in the number of cases in the last one month.
The Centre on Saturday rushed two high level multidisciplinary public health teams to Maharashtra and Punjab to assist the state health departments in Covid-19 surveillance, control and containment measures.
The Maharashtra team is being led by P Ravindran, senior CMO, disaster management cell of the Health Ministry while the Punjab team is being headed by S K Singh, Director, National Center for Disease Control, New Delhi.
Each of these ten states has been asked to accelerate vaccination for priority population groups in districts reporting higher cases. They were told to make optimal use of the available vaccine doses and focus on critical districts.