New Delhi: As reports of COVID-19 positive cases are increasingly coming from India’s urban area, the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on Saturday underlined the need for preparedness and response to COVID-19 in urban settlements.
Accordingly, a guideline highlighting COVID management protocols have been issued to India’s 12 states including Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Punjab and Odisha.
The Health Ministry has noticed that these particular 12 states are reporting the maximum number of cases where urban areas of these states are mostly affected.
”A substantial percentage of the population is migrant workers employed in the industrial and other informal sectors. These areas are characterized by the poor structural quality of housing, inadequate access to safe water, poor sanitation and insecure residential status. There are gaps in health and healthcare services,” the guidelines issued to the states have said.
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According to the 2011 Census, there are 2613 towns and cities, with 6.54 crore population residing in 1.39 crore households, representing 17.4 of all urban population. This would have increased in number further since the last few years.
Admitting that managing COVID-19 in urban areas is challenging, the Health Ministry pointed out that these localities are often overcrowded, with many people crammed into very small living spaces.
Highlighting on the need for an incident response system, the Ministry said that an Incident Commander of appropriate seniority would be identified depending upon the geographic extent of the settlements and its population size.
“The Incident Commander will identify its planning, operation, logistics and finance teams to implement the preparedness measures to respond to a COVID outbreak. The Incident Commander who can evolve a coordination mechanism shall report to the Municipal Commissioner,” said the guidelines.
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The Ministry said that a few core components like surveillance, hospital preparedness and clinical management, pharmaceutical intervention and non-pharmaceutical intervention, social distancing, quarantine facility, face cover, sanitation, community volunteers, risk communication, capacity building for COVID containment plan for these urban settlements will address the key challenges specific to these areas.
The Ministry further said that as a response to COVID-19 outbreak in urban settlements, municipal bodies should emphasise the implementation of cluster containment plan, defining area of operation, as well as applying strict perimeter control.
It said that the Incident Commander will daily review the implementation of containment plans in the settlements. Adequate provisions for appropriate PPEs must be made for field-level surveillance teams, the Ministry said.
“All information will be shared on a daily basis with the District and State Control rooms also. The Control rooms shall analyze the information on a daily basis and necessary guidance, in turn, will be provided to the teams at field level as per the information so collated regularly,” the Ministry said in its guidelines.
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