JAMMU: In the backdrop of ease of movement restrictions and return of migrant workers, the Cabinet Secretary has asked all the States and Union Territories to keep a close watch on the emerging trajectory of COVID spread and accordingly devise a proactive containment strategy.
Chief Secretary, B V R Subrahmanyam along with Administrative Secretaries of departments of Health, Information, Disaster Management, Relief Rehabilitation and Reconstruction, and Director, National Health Mission participated in the interaction with the Cabinet Secretary on video conference.
While reviewing the post restriction-relaxation situation, Cabinet Secretary stressed on the States/ UTs to dedicatedly monitor the changes in confirmation rate, number of actives cases, fatality rate and doubling rate especially around the emerging hotspots.
The Cabinet Secretary reiterated the need of effective containment strategy and adequate testing facilities for early detection of COVID cases so as to minimise its spread in the community. This can be further reinforced by perimeter control, active house to house surveillance, contact tracing and timely testing, he added.
Regarding medical infrastructure, Cabinet Secretary asked the States/ UTs to ensure efficient hospital services by undertaking advance planning for two months with an aim to secure adequate bed capacity, isolation facility and availability of health care professionals.
Speaking about fatality mitigation strategy, Cabinet Secretary emphasised on early hospitalisation of vulnerable patients especially children, old aged and patients with co-morbidity. He said that end-to-end case management comprising surveillance, testing, treatment, referrals including transition through ambulance needs to be further strengthened through better coordination of the concerned agencies.
Moreover, as a part of aggressive surveillance and contact tracing, use of Arogya Setu App was endorsed as it shares the self assessment information from the users with Ministry of Health and Family Welfare which then shares the same with States and UTs. It was informed that the app generates information about people susceptible to infection by comparing the travel history of COVID patients to self assessment symptoms of the users.
