Health Secretary Preeti Sudan and Rajesh Bhushan, OSD, MoHFW along with senior officers of the Health Ministry held a high level review meeting on Monday with officials of districts which are witnessing surge in Covid-19 cases.

The meeting was held through a video conference attended by District Collectors, Municipal Commissioners, Chief Medical Officers, Superintendent of District Hospitals and Principle of Medical Colleges from 45 municipalities/municipal corporations across 38 districts in ten states.

These districts are from the following States/UTs: Maharashtra, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan, Haryana, Gujarat, Jammu and Kashmir, Karnataka, Uttarakhand and Madhya Pradesh.

In the meeting, issues like the widespread infection in densely populated urban areas, with areas that shared public amenities; importance of house-to-house surveys; prompt testing followed by prompt isolation and clinical management of cases and containment strategy to be implemented were discussed.

“The State officials were advised on the measures to be taken in the containment zones for case management and buffer zones surveillance activities and promotion of COVID appropriate behavior,” the Health Ministry said.

To reduce the case fatality rate, the officials were briefed on measures to be taken like prioritising the high-risk and vulnerable segments like elderly people and people with co-morbidities while contact-tracing to prevent deaths; active surveillance measures, adequate testing and promoting health seeking behaviour for timely detection of cases; ensuring timely shifting of patients without escalating the symptoms, it added.

With regards to the infrastructure and human resource management for the containment of COVID-19, it was advised that adequate planning for health infrastructure should be taken up; adequate number of surveillance teams to be provided; a system to be put in place for bed availability management; Centres of Excellence to provide hand-holding for medical professionals and senior officers to be deployed for hospitals to offer help to citizens to find health services as per their need.

While speaking on field governance, Municipal authorities were advised to take leadership and put the whole municipal infrastructure for containment measures using the ‘whole of Government approach’. It was also highlighted that along with COVID-19 management efforts, care needs to be given to the regular and essential health services that are also available for the citizens.