The Centre urged states more than 10% covid-19 positivity rates to consider strict measures. This will prevent or restrict people’s movement and crowding.
The Centre has advised states to increase their testing for COVID-19 testing. Citing the fact that 46 districts have a positive rate of more than 10%, while another 53 have a positive rate of between 5% and 10%.
According to the Ministry of Health, any foolishness at this point will worsen the situation in these districts. On Saturday, Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan chaired a high-level meeting in Kerala, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Odisha, Assam, Mizoram, Meghalaya, Andhra Pradesh, and Manipur to discuss the COVID-19 situation.
The public health measures adopted by the health authorities in these states to monitor, contain, and manage COVID-19 were also reviewed.
These states are reporting either an increase in daily Covid cases or an increase in positivity rate.
The Health Ministry, in a statement, said, “All districts reporting positivity rate of more than 10% in the last few weeks need to consider strict restrictions to prevent/curtail the movement of people, formation of crowds and intermingling of people to prevent the spread of infection.”
It said there is a need to carefully and strictly monitor these cases. So that they do not meet other people and spread the virus. More than 80% of active cases in these states are reported to be in-home isolation.
“The people in home isolation should be effectively monitored in such a manner to ensure that those who require hospitalization are seamlessly transferred for timely clinical treatment.”
“Detailed standard operating procedure covering various facets of effective clinical management of COVID-19 patients in hospitals have been earlier shared with the states for prompt shifting and effective hospital management,” the Centre told states.
The ministry also requested that states concentrate on districts with a positive rate of less than 10%. In order to protect these districts and their populations by focusing on vaccination saturation, it is a matter of concern.
“States were again informed that this quantum of vaccine doses indicates the minimum possible allocation by the Centre to the states; quantum more than this is usually delivered by the Union Health Ministry to states based on their consumption,” the statement said.
“States have been earlier advised regarding this in the past two months. Provisions under the Clinical Establishment Act enable states to issue such direction to private hospitals. For states which have already issued such directions, they were advised to review the status and facilitate the private hospitals further,” it said.
States were advised to undertake intensive containment and active surveillance in clusters reporting higher cases, define containment zones based on mapping of cases and contacts traced and undertake regular reviews and follow-up.
The meeting included a granular review of the most severely impacted districts in these states, COVID-19 vaccine coverage, the status of ventilators, PSA plants, oxygen cylinders, and concentrators, as well as certain key statistics.
States were asked to use the INSACOG laboratory network for genomic surveillance to screen international travellers. The administration should necessarily monitor ongoing surveillance via sentinel sites (RT-PCR labs or secondary and tertiary care institutions that handle COVID patients), and conduct surge monitoring.
