‘UP has adopted Pulse Polio-like strategy to fight Covid’

The state health and family welfare department has adopted a Pulse Polio-like campaign strategy to intensify the fight against the second wave of Covid-19 pandemic, said a health department officer

The state health and family welfare department has adopted a Pulse Polio-like campaign strategy to intensify the fight against the second wave of Covid-19 pandemic, said a health department officer.

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Pulse Polio is an immunisation campaign established by the government of India to eliminate polio in India by vaccinating all children under the age of five years against the polio virus.

“Health workers have been directed to intensify the surveillance in the containment zones by marking the start and end points of the surveillance activities there. Health teams will visit each household to collect information about the health condition of the family members and sensitise them about the symptoms as well as preventive measures,” he said.

“The details of the people having symptoms like cough, cold, fever or trouble in breathing will be collected. The details will be passed to the district surveillance teams that will collect the samples of the suspected patients for test. Once the test is positive, the patients will be put in either home isolation or be shifted to the Covid hospital for medical care,” he added.

“The strategy is to break the infection chain by identifying the infected person and separating him from the rest of the population. All the district magistrates and chief medical officers have been directed to constitute quick response teams equipped with ambulances for contact tracing and admission of patients in the hospitals,” the officer further said.

“Till Sunday, the state had a total 6,287 containment zones in its 75 districts. The state government has announced the guidelines for the containment zones. District surveillance officer will inform district immunisation officer about the positive Covid cases in the containment zones. The containment zone for a single positive case will be of 25-metre radius and 50-metre radius for more than one case,” he said.

“An area will be marked as containment zone for 14 days from the date of the sample collection of the positive case. If no fresh case is detected for 14 days since the last positive case, the area will be removed from the list of the containment zone,” the officer said.