Union Health Secretary stresses on monitoring home isolation, avoiding mingling

More than 80 percent active cases in these states are reported to be in home isolation. There is a need to effectively and strictly monitor these cases so that they are not intermingling and circulating in their neighborhoods, community, village, mohalla, ward, and spreading the infection, a meeting chaired by Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan pointed out.

New Delhi: Being aware of the fact that 10 States in India have been witnessing an upsurge in Covid cases and test rate positivity, Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan chaired a high-level meeting on Saturday and reviewed the situation.

All districts reporting a positive rate of more than 10 percent in the last few weeks need to consider strict restrictions to prevent and curtail movement of people, formation of crowds and intermingling of people to prevent spread of infection. It was forcefully underlined that any laxity at this stage will result in deterioration of the situation in these districts. The 10 states where cases and positivity witnessed a spike include Kerala, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Odisha, Assam, Mizoram, Meghalaya, Andhra Pradesh and Manipur. More than 80 percent active cases in these states are reported to be in home isolation. There is a need to effectively and strictly monitor these cases so that they are not intermingling and circulating in their neighborhoods, community, village, mohalla, ward, and spreading the infection, the meeting pointed out.

“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 SOPs 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,” Bhushan said.

Dr. Balram Bhargava, DG, ICMR warned against any complacency with around 40,000 cases being reported daily since the preceding weeks.

Highlighting the fact that 46 districts are showing more than 10 percent positivity while another 53 districts are showing a positivity between five percent to 10 percent, Bhargava urged the States to ramp up their testing.

States have been advised to conduct their own state level sero-surveys for district-wise disease prevalence data, as the national level sero-prevalence survey was heterogeneous in nature, in collaboration with ICMR to ensure the same sturdy protocols of survey.

He also advised the States to ramp up vaccination in the 60 plus and 45-60 age categories as evidence shows nearly 80 percent of the mortality is from these vulnerable age-groups. Regarding enforcement measures, he advised the State authorities for avoiding all non-essential travel and to discourage all large gatherings of crowds.

States were asked to use the INSACOG laboratory network for genomic surveillance to screen International Travelers (for the entry of new variants and mutants in India from other countries), monitor ongoing surveillance through Sentinel Sites (RT-PCR labs or secondary & tertiary care hospitals managing COVID cases) and surge surveillance.

The States were also asked to undertake intensive containment and active surveillance in clusters reporting higher cases.