E-Paper
Uttarakhand forms expert panel to study best Covid-19 containment practices around globe
Uttarakhand aims to learn from best Covid-19 containment strategies adopted around the globe.
Uttarakhand government on Friday announced the constitution of a technical committee to provide inputs to the state government for effective containment of Covid-19 in the Himalayan state. The committee has been mandated to analyse best practices adopted in other states of the country or anywhere in the world. The committee has also been mandated to analyse published studies to suggest actionable points.
“In the present scenario of Covid-19 infection transmission in Uttarakhand state, it becomes imperative to develop data-driven policies and evidence-based action (plan) for containment of Covid-19 and Dengue. It is pertinent to form a technical committee comprising senior public health experts from medical colleges in the state. The committee is expected to provide technical inputs to the government for informed decision making”, said an order issued on Friday by Pankaj Kumar Pandey, secretary (in-charge) health department.
According to the order, the chief operation officer of the state’s Covid control room will be responsible for providing available data to the committee on a weekly basis at a scheduled time, preferably by each Friday evening.
The committee can also acquire data from respective chief medical officers in districts. The committee has been asked to prepare a weekly report preferably every Monday.
The committee has been mandated to look into a range of issues like risk factors associated with Covid-19 transmission, causal analysis of Covid 19 deaths, in-depth analysis of socio-demographic profile, testing patterns, co-morbidities, symptomatology and severity of the virus spread.
The committee will also look into infection prevention and control among healthcare workers and workplace safety, epidemiological/lab surveillance in containment zones, the impact of Covid-19 on healthcare facilities, and overall health impact assessment.
The committee comprises Prof Devrat Roy, associate professor at Government Doon Medical College Dehradun as its chairman. Other four members of the committee include Dr Sadhna Awasthi, associate professor at government medical college Haldwani, Prof Amit Singh from government medical college Almora, DR Arjit Kumar, associate professor from government medical college Srinagar and Dr Vikas Sharma from WHO unit Uttarakhand.
So far 2,984 Covid-19 positive cases have been reported in the state till Thursday evening since the reporting of the first case on March 15 more than three months ago. A total of 42 Covid-19 positive patients have died in Uttarakhand till now.
The rate of doubling of cases based on the last seven days stands at 57.56 days in the state, while the recovery rate has reached 80.60%. Uttarakhand has so far tested over 72,000 samples, of which, results of over 5,900 samples are awaited.
