Covid-19 cases surge in 115 dists in 9 States, Centre concerned

States told to report and monitor dist-wise SARI and ILI cases daily

IndiGlobal Bureau

The Union government expressed concern over surge in Covid-19 cases in the past one month in nine States including Kerala, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Assam, Andhra Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh. 115 districts in these States are either reporting a surge in new daily COVID cases or a rise in positivity.

In this backdrop, Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan chaired a high-level meeting today to review the Covid situation in the 9 states. The public health measures for surveillance, containment and management of COVID19 were also reviewed. Dr V K Paul, Member (Health), NITI Aayog was also present.

Dr V. K. Paul reiterated, “We need to be mindful that Covid has not gone. Looking at the global scenario, we need to be at high alert. There is poor surveillance, poor testing and below average vaccination in many states undergoing the present surge”, he pointed out. He urged states to improve the testing in areas with high positivity, increase surveillance as per the revised surveillance strategy besides speeding up vaccination.

Dr Randeep Guleria, Director, AIIMS, New Delhi advised States to be attentive to clinical symptoms of infected patients and not wait till their genome sequencing is done to identify whether a cluster is emerging in any state. States need to be attentive to the changing pattern of clinical manifestation of hospitalized patients, he stated.

Union Health Secretary underlined the critical COVID control and management strategies as below:

1. All districts reporting higher positivity rate need to undertake adequate testing with higher proportion of RTPCR tests. Any laxity will result in deterioration of the situation in these districts.

2. There is need to effectively and strictly monitor home isolation cases so that they are not intermingling and circulating in their neighborhoods, community, village, mohalla, ward etc., and spreading the infection.

3. States were advised to conduct surveillance as per revised surveillance strategy issued on 9 th June, 2022. They were further directed to report district-wise SARI (Severe Acute Respiratory Illness) and ILI (Influenza-like Illness) cases on a daily basis. Also, to send these for genome sequencing to mapped labs.

4. States were advised to undertake test indicated proportion of international arrivals, with genome sequencing of all positives; identify sentinel sites for INSACOG network to send samples for Whole Genome Sequencing.

5. States also to send positive samples from large clusters / outbreaks in the community and unusual events for Whole Genome Sequencing.

6. States were urged to accelerate administration of ongoing free Covid-19 vaccination for 1st , 2 nd and precaution dose. States were further urged to intensify the implementation of Free Precaution Doses for 18+ population under ‘COVID Vaccination Amrit Mahotsav’ till 30th September, 2022.