Next few days very important, formulate plan to avoid community transmission: Cabinet Secy to states

Cabinet Secretary Rajiv Gauba on Sunday asked all district magistrates to prepare crisis management plans for their respective regions even as COVID-19 expanded its footprint to cover 274 districts across the country.

Chairing ‘virtual’ meeting of district magistrates and senior officials, Gauba also asked the top officials from COVID-19 hotspots such as Bhilwara, Pathanamthitta, Noida, Mumbai to share their experiences of aggressive surveillance and contact tracing to arrest the spread of the outbreak in their regions.

Proactive and ruthless implementation of containment plan and preparedness to manage a sudden spike in cases were the two key points that emerged from the presentations of the district magistrates of Bhilwara, Pathanamthitta, Noida, Mumbai, East Delhi and Agra which had emerged as hotspots.

As on Sunday, the Health Ministry said there were a total of 3,577 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and the death toll had climbed up to 83. On the brighter side, 275 persons had recovered from the infection.

District officials shared the strategies adopted by them to combat the pandemic like how they delineated containment and buffer zone, how they carried outdoor-to-door survey through special teams, how through telemedicine and call centres the passengers who had come were monitored.

On Saturday, the Health Ministry had released an aggressive containment plan for large outbreaks of COVID-19 that included creating buffer zones and sealing off areas for nearly a month. It states that the plan can be scaled down only if no new cases are reported from the hotspots for 28 days after the last confirmed case.

In Bhilwara, the district officials had cordoned off the entire strict and carried out surveys of almost the entire 28 lakh population for flu-like illnesses. In Pathanamthitta, officials had moved quickly to isolate all primary and secondary contacts of persons who had tested positive for COVID-19.

District officials published flow charts of the travel history of those infected with the virus and ensuring their isolation as the district is home to the famous Sabarimala shrine which attract huge number of devotees.

Officials from Mumbai shared their experiences about ring-fencing the high-risk persons, particularly the elderly who were more susceptible to infections.