Jammu: Chief Secretary B V R Subrahmanyam on Friday said the administration is consistently monitoring the COVID trajectory with a special focus on districts with an increased tourist footfall.
He also said that the administration would be carrying out a fast-track vaccination drive to cover all persons in the eligible age groups in four districts — Jammu, Srinagar, Budgam and Baramulla — showing maximum number of COVID-19 cases.
Subrahmanyam was speaking at a meeting chaired by Union Cabinet Secretary Rajiv Gauba in the backdrop of recent surge in the COVID-19 cases across the country.
The Jammu and Kashmir administration is consistently monitoring the COVID trajectory among its local population with a special focus on districts with an increased tourist footfall, he added.
The cabinet secretary in the high-level meeting with the chief secretaries directed all the states and Union territories to strictly implement test, trace, treat strategy, COVID-appropriate behaviour and vaccination to address the challenging situation of sharp rise in the number of coronavirus cases.
Considering the deterioration in the COVID scenario, the Cabinet Secretary emphasised that it is time once again a comprehensive approach of the governments in the States/UTs is adopted to meet the challenge. Attributing the sudden rise in cases to complacency in the community as a result of slight improvement in the numbers ending 2020, the Cabinet Secretary informed that certain states have already crossed their previously reported peaks in the number of cases.
He reiterated that vaccination alone is no panacea to the problem but needs strictly to go hand-in-hand with testing, tracing, containment and enforcement of COVID appropriate behaviour.
“A clear message needs to go from top level to the entire state machinery that all weapons in the armoury are required to be utilized along with vaccination to deal with the problem,” he added.
He called for a multi-sectoral response in addition to swift vaccination drives to cover maximum population of the target age groups to prevent subsequent waves of infection especially in the wake of emergence of mutant strains of the virus.
He advised to ardently promote COVID appropriate behaviour, improve the rate of testing especially in districts that are falling short of target quotas, increase the share of RTPCR tests viz-a-viz RATs, adopt refocused & stringent containment strategies and undertake priority vaccination with provisions of geographically targeted vaccination in clusters witnessing a surge in COVID cases.
