New Delhi: Even after a possible withdrawal of nationwide lockdown on May 3, surveillance will continue for Influenza-like Illness (ILI) and Severe Acute Respiratory Infection (SARI). Sources in the Union Health Ministry said that surveillance of ILI and SARI could be the followup action for COVID-19 pandemic.
The Health Ministry has chalked out a detailed action strategy and guidelines to contain the large outbreak of COVID-19 in India.
"The operations will be scaled down if no secondary laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 case is reported from the geographic zone for at least four weeks after the last confirmed test has been isolated and all his contacts have been followed up for 28 days. A containment operation (large outbreak or cluster) is deemed to be over 28 days from the date the last case in the containment zone tests negative," the guidelines from the Health Ministry said.
In the guidelines, a copy of which is in possession of ETV Bharat said that containment of large outbreak will be made through geographic quarantine. A large outbreak is defined as a localised increase in the incidents of COVID-19 cases occurring within a defined geographical area like in a village, town or city. This could also imply progression of a small cluster. Earlier noticed for which cluster management action is under implementation into multiple clusters.
"The cases may or may not be epidemiological links. For the operational purpose, a large outbreak is deemed to be present when there are 15 or more cases," the guidelines pointed out.
While defining the geographic quarantine, the guidelines said that geographic quarantine (cordon sanitarian) strategy calls for near-absolute interaction of movement of people to and from a relatively large defined geographical area where there is single large outbreak or multiple foci of local transmission of COVID-19.
"In simple terms, it is a barrier erected around the focus of infection. Geographic quarantine shall apply to such areas reporting large outbreak or multiple clusters of COVID-19 spread over multiple blocks of one or more districts that are contagious based on the distribution of cases and contacts," the guidelines said.
The guidelines also pointed out that several variables determine the success of the containment operation through a geographic quarantine that includes number and size of clusters, the effectiveness of geographic quarantine, public health response in terms of active case finding, testing of a large number of cases, immediate isolation of suspect and confirmed cases and quarantine of contacts.
The guideline has also highlighted that state government will ensure that unaffected districts are also trained along the same lines to strengthen the core capacities of their RRTs, doctors, nurse, support staff and non-health field formations.
It may be mentioned here that at present government has directed that all ILI and SARI patients in hotspot and containment areas need to undergo Covid19 testing. Currently, there are 170 hotspots and 207 non-hotspots districts across India whereas 400 districts are still unaffected by COVID-19 pandemic.
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