Gurugram: Reticent families, unreachable patients make Covid contact tracing challenging

Gurugram: As the number of coronavirus (Covid-19) disease cases continue to rise in the city, the rapid response team and the ground teams at urban primary health

Gurugram: As the number of coronavirus (Covid-19) disease cases continue to rise in the city, the rapid response team and the ground teams at urban primary health centres (PHC) find it difficult to trace people who might have come in contact with positive cases. According to the Haryana Shahri Vikas Pradhikaran (HSVP), the nodal agency for contact tracing, on-ground teams are not able to reach the contacts either because families are reluctant to share information or are not responding to telephone calls.

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“Contacts of many Covid-19 patients go untraced or unattended. If 200 positive cases are reported in a day, we are able to reach out to only 160-170 people,” Jitender Kumar, administrator, HSVP.

“Earlier, the problems were incorrect addresses or contact numbers of the patients taken at the time of sample collection, which has been resolved to an extent. But now, many patients don’t respond to the calls by our teams while some don’t share correct information. It affects the overall contact tracing process,” he said.

According to him, this issue has been continuing since early June when cases began to surge drastically, with more than 200 Covid-19 cases reported in a day. “The process has been improved now and made systematic,” said Kumar, adding that the number of teams will also be increased for proper surveillance. Currently, there are 99 rapid response teams, each comprising two members.

For this, the health department will be helping the HSVP with volunteers. District chief medical officer Dr Virender Yadav, who held a meeting with HSVP officials Wednesday, said volunteers as well as Anganwadi workers are being roped in for contact tracing.

“To break the chain of transmission, it is crucial to identify contacts of Covid-positive patients. To not to miss out on this, we are deploying volunteers and Anganwadi workers as well. The work will be divided between different groups. For example, in the first shift which is before lunch, volunteers and the Auxiliary Nurse Midwife will do contact tracing, while in the second half, ASHA and Anganwadi workers will visit Covid-19 positive families to collect details.”

Dr Yadav said that the focus is on increasing contact tracing in seven affected areas of the city.

On June 1, there were 1,000 Covid cases in the district. This number has now become almost threefold, with a total of 3991 cases by June 18, an increase of almost 3,000 in 17 days. There have been a total of 52 deaths so far in Gurugram due to Covid.