The Uttar Pradesh government-appointed nodal officer on Thursday directed Ghaziabad officials to complete the pending works of tracing and early testing of the contacts of coronavirus (Covid-19) patients, and also directed for a one-day special surveillance drive in order to detect cases of influenza like illness (ILI) and severe acute respiratory infections (SARI) in containment zones. The official further directed that the suspect cases found during the drive should be tested with the help of Reverse-Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) test, considered the golden standard in testing for Sars-Cov-2. The one-day drive is to be conducted on Friday.
The nodal officer, Senthil Pandian C, on Thursday took a review of all Covid-19-related measures in Ghaziabad and asked officials to expedite pending works.
According to official records, out of 4,855 total cases till morning of July 30 (as per live portal data), 23,138 contacts of 4,701 positive cases, with a rate of about 96.84%, were traced. Going by the figures, the average contact per positive patient is about 4.9. Of the 23,138 contacts traced, about 90.4% were also tested, said officials of the district health department.
“The nodal officer took review of contact tracing and appreciated our efforts. The rate of contact tracing in Ghaziabad is high and we have planned that the pending work of contact tracing will also be traced and if required, the help of police surveillance will also be taken up. Further, we had also shifted focus on immediate testing of contacts in order to control the spread of the infection. At times, we found cases where mobile numbers or addresses of contacts were not found correct or they move to other cities. So, sometimes it leads to delays,” said Ajay Shankar Pandey, district magistrate.
“Our dedicated teams at the control room are working hard to increase the rate further. A majority of cases have come up in the month of July and the rate of contact tracing in July is almost touching 96%. Besides this, we are also focussing on fast uploading of contact tracing data on the state government’s portal,” said Pandey.
{{/usCountry}}“Our dedicated teams at the control room are working hard to increase the rate further. A majority of cases have come up in the month of July and the rate of contact tracing in July is almost touching 96%. Besides this, we are also focussing on fast uploading of contact tracing data on the state government’s portal,” said Pandey.
{{/usCountry}}According to officials, a total of 2,918 contacts of 3,052 patients were traced from July 1 to July 29 (95.6%), which resulted in tracing of 14,243 contacts with 4.88 contacts per patient and about 92% were also tested.
For the one-day special drive in containment zones, the nodal officer also directed the Ghaziabad officials to mandatorily take up RT-PCR tests of cases of ILI and SARI in containment zones.
From July 2 to July 12, the UP government had also directed a special door-to-door surveillance drive during which suspected cases of ILI and SARI were also identified and 150 of these were found positive after testing.
“The nodal officer directed that a one-day special drive is to be carried out in containment zones having a high number of cases, and cases of ILI and SARI should be scanned. He especially directed that instead of antigen tests, such cases should be tested only with RT-PCR test. Friday has been decided as the day for holding the drive. This shall continue till further orders,” the DM added.
According to official figures, about 2,50,618 households were surveyed from July 13 to July 29 (after UP government’s special surveillance drive from July 2 to July 12), covering a population of about 9,85,498 persons. Officials said they identified 237 cases of ILI and 233 of SARI cases and 19 of the total tested positive for Covid-19.
According to the official figures till Thursday morning, the health department so far has completed total testing of 95,361 tests, out of which 4,856 have tested positive so far since the first week of March, when the first Covid-19 case was detected in the district.
At present, the district has an overall positivity rate of about 5.1% and recovery rate of about 83.7% (4,009 patients recovered) while the fatality rate is about 1.3% with a total of 64 deaths so far.
According to the latest list of July 27, the district has 80 containment zones in category 1 (having one positive case) while 186 others were listed under category 2 zones (having more than one case).