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Only 15% Covid-19 surveillance coverage so far, nodal officers ask health department to increase teams
The Uttar Pradesh government’s nodal officers to oversee Covid-19 containment measures in Ghaziabad have asked the district health department to increase the number
The Uttar Pradesh government’s nodal officers to oversee Covid-19 containment measures in Ghaziabad have asked the district health department to increase the number of surveillance teams to increase sample collection.
According to officials, there are 260 surveillance teams deployed to monitor around 600,000 of the district’s 4.2 million people. One official said that if the district had to target every household, they would need over 1,200 such teams.
The teams comprising three members -- comprising volunteers, and two trained health workers -- go to hot spot and other areas to find patients with symptoms of the coronavirus disease or other health complications. Ghaziabad on Wednesday had a total of 718 cases.
“The teams comprise of volunteers, besides auxillary nurse midwife and accredited social health activists (ASHA) workers. These teams also help in contact tracing. The nodal officers said that we need to rope in more teams for taking up more active surveillance,” said Dr NK Gupta, Ghaziabad chief medical officer.
Surveillance teams, which have a major role to play in containing the spread of Covide-19, visit households and put up questionnaire to residents in order to find out if anyone suffers symptoms or affected by severe acute respiratory infection (SARI)-- when a patient presents with history of fever, cough and requires hospitalisation. In case they find people with symptoms, their samples are collected to test for the coronavirus disease.
According to officials, the cases that emerged in June (378 case) was SARI and those who tested positive for Covid-19 often suffered critical illness.
The 260 surveillance teams were able to find around a quarter of the total Covid-19 positive cases that have emerged so far in Ghaziabad.
According to state health department officials, 18,458 areas in the state, including 5980 hot spots, are under surveillance. About 9.4 million households were surveyed.
“It is required that every household is surveyed. For the purpose of catering to all households we need about 1200-1500 teams. One team is assigned to take up survey of 50 households in a day. The number of members in team has also declined as many of them have been tasked with vaccination, deliveries and other activities. We are trying to ascertain the human resource needs and will draw out more workers,” said GK Mishra, district malaria officer. “As far as sampling is concerned, we have about 300 sampling done by the health department and about 50 samples as an average per day by private laboratories. Once the surveillance teams are increased, more sampling can be taken up.”
At present, total of 13879 samples have been taken up so far from across the district. The officials said that they have the capacity to hike sampling to about 700-750 per day.
The UP government has sent IAS Senthil Pandian C and Dr Anil Chandra, professor of neurosurgery from King George’s Medical University, Lucknow, to look after infrastructure and healthcare arrangements in Ghaziabad.
The Uttar Pradesh chief minister has identified Ghaziabad as one of the 11 sensitive districts in the state where incidence of Covid-19 cases is on rise.
“The western UP districts pose a major challenge and we have sent senior IAS and health department officials to these districts for review. We are also working on a plan for Meerut, Ghaziabad, Gautam Budh Nagar, Hapur and Bulandshahr districts on directions of the chief minister. The CM has also directed for increase in Covid beds to ensure, in accordance with the policy, that symptomatic and asymptomatic patients are admitted to Covid hospitals,” said Awanish Awasthi, UP’s additional chief secretary (home).
