E-Paper
Survey, identify, quarantine: A look at the Agra model in Covid-19 fight
Agra listed people who had returned from abroad and identified their family members and those in contact with them. Areas with covid-19 cases were declared “hot spots” with the area within a three-kilometre radius acting as a containment zone, and the area within a five-kilometre radius as a buffer zone.
The “Agra Model” for tackling Covid-19 has been lauded by the central government, which plans to replicate it nationwide, even though the number of positive cases in the area has crossed the 100 mark.
Officials say the local administration’s proactive approach in identifying cases, a door-to-door survey, the number of samples sent for testing, adequate quarantine measures and recovery of infected people are what makes the “Agra Model” special in the fight against the Coronavirus.
Agra has recorded one death – a 76-year-old woman suffering from asthma who was infected by her grandson after he returned from abroad.
District magistrate Prabhu N Singh said the first six positive cases in Agra were detected on March 3. “With this, we focused on the door-to-door survey, identification of infected cases and placing them in quarantine. The outcome is that cases testing positive now are mostly those already in quarantine,” he said.
Agra listed people who had returned from abroad and identified their family members and those in contact with them. Areas with positive cases were declared “hot spots” with the area within a three-kilometre radius acting as a containment zone, and the area within a five-kilometre radius as a buffer zone.
“We succeeded in curing 10 patients, including three who were treated at SN Medical College in Agra. Another aspect was the success in getting hot spots de-listed with an extensive door-to-door survey and sanitising the area with strict measures to avoid movement within hot spots,” said Singh.
The authorities had designated 38 areas as hot spots and after some of them were removed from the list, the total now is 28.
Chief medical officer Mukesh Kumar Vats said more than 2,000 health workers toiled round the clock alongside 3,000 Asha workers for the door-to-door survey to identify suspected cases. The survey by 1,248 two-member teams covered some 160,000 houses in Agra, checking about a million residents, he said.
About 2,500 people were found symptomatic, including 36 who had a history of travel and were subjected to testing.
A fool-proof quarantine approach was developed and those found to be asymptomatic were put in home quarantine while those who were symptomatic were put in quarantine in special facilities. “Thus, we are mostly testing those already in quarantine,” said Vats.
The initial cases from early March were those with a history of travel and authorities focused on tracing their contacts and prepared a list of susceptible people who were tested. “In this process, we worked on clusters and got them sanitised and [removed them] from the list of hotspots, allowing us to focus on new clusters,” Vats added.
Singh said 2,144 samples from Agra had been tested so far, of which 104 were found to be positive as of Sunday, when 12 more Covid-19 cases were found. Most of these new cases were staff of a private hospital and their contacts. “This hospital alone had 16 cases testing positive and has turned into a major hot spot. Our team is planning to take some drastic measures,” he said.
By the end of March, Agra had only 12 cases, of whom eight had recovered and the rest were being treated. With the detection of cases linked to the Tablighi Jamaat gathering in New Delhi, the overall number began rising in April.
Of the 104 positive cases so far, exactly half were linked to the Tablighi Jamaat gathering, and this led to a setback for all the work done by the Agra administration, officials said.
“We had to search for these Jamaat members and their contacts and extensive work was done in tracing them. This increased the number drastically,” Vats said, adding about 28 Jamaat members had travelled to Agra.
A control room, established in the Agra Smart City office, has heard about 7,000 complaints and taken steps to resolve them.
Officials said a fresh challenge now is positive cases being reported in rural areas such as Saiyyan, Fatehpur Sikri, Khandoli and Iradat Nagar.
Vats said authorities have framed a plan for these rural areas and health staff had begun thermal screening in villages. Infected people are being included in two categories – those who had brought infections to rural areas, and those working in cities in places such as hospitals where they can be infected.
Joint secretary Lav Agarwal of the Union health ministry had lauded the “Agra Model” during a news briefing in New Delhi on Saturday. “The district authorities in Agra used the Smart City Control Room as a war room and included the private sector in catering to the vulnerable sections to maintain the food chain. The focus remained on contact tracing and isolating patients, for which the Agra district administration identified all who were in contact with the first cases identified,” he said.
