Contact tracing dips in December, Ghaziabad has overall 345 Covid-19 cases with zero contacts

The contact-tracing exercise which is done on daily basis to find out contacts of Covid-19 patients has dipped in the ongoing month of December and stands at an

The contact-tracing exercise which is done on daily basis to find out contacts of Covid-19 patients has dipped in the ongoing month of December and stands at an average of about 19.2 contacts per positive patient. The officials said that as per state government’s directions given in October, they have to trace at least 25 contacts per patient.

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The official figures of the district health department states that the district was tracing an average of about 22.2 contacts per positive case in October and it went further to an average of about 29 contacts per positive patient in the month of November.

However, the figure has dipped to 19.2 in 15 days of December. Further, the list also includes 345 positive cases whose contacts are yet to be traced. These include 239 positive cases in the month of December while the rest are in different months from May to November.

“The contact tracing has dipped a bit in the month of December and it could be due to fact that some of our supervising staff members have turned positive while some staff involved in contact tracing has also taken medical leaves. Regarding the 345 odd positive patients having no contacts, majority are in the month of December. The rest are yet to be traced,” said an officer from the district health department who wished not to be named.

The positive cases having zero contacts are one each in months of May and June, 23 in July, 28 in August, 22 in September, 15 in October and 16 in November besides 243 in 15 days of December.

“We are working to complete the pending contact tracing and it is likely that we will be able to make up in another couple of days,” the officer added.

From March to December 15, the district as per the official records of the health department has a tally of 25330 positive cases and their contact tracing has yielded 417298 contacts with an overall average of about 16.5 contacts per positive patient.

Contact tracing is a vital task during the Covid-related activities and helps in finding out any suspected cases who have been in touch with a positive patient. The teams deployed in contact tracing finds such contacts and get them tested in order to check the spread of infection. The positive contacts are further isolated and taken to healthcare facility for treatment.

“We will check up the issue with contact tracing and if it has dipped a bit we will review and get the issue resolved within couple of days,” said Ajay Shankar Pandey, district magistrate.

Experts said that daily contact tracing is must under present circumstances as despite lot of awareness measures people still move about and can pass on infection to others.

“We have instances where people after turning positive visited us despite our telling their attendants to ensure that they don’t move out of house. So, there is still laxity on part of people who move about and may infect others. So, even nowadays it is very easy to trace 25 contacts per positive case,” said Dr Ashish Agrawal, president of Indian Medical Association – Ghaziabad.

“If the health department has shortage of staff or resources, they must deploy additional. Daily contact tracing is as important as surveillance or testing and should be beefed up,” he, added.