Bhubaneswar: With rising cases of Covid-19 in the state, the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) Monday issued detailed SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) for contact tracing and follow-up actions.
As per the notification issued by the BMC, all positive cases will now be categorized under three major categories of Returnees, Local Contacts and Hospital Patient Cases. These will further have sub-categories and the contact tracing will be done accordingly.
“Under the Returnee category all individuals arriving from outside state/countries will be registered and will be under quarantine either in home or institutional/paid quarantine. If any case from home quarantine is detected the contact tracing will broadly sub-categorised on basis of home or paid quarantine,” the notification stated.
Under the home quarantine, if the family is found to have followed strict home quarantine, then only the family members will be covered under primary contact. However, in case of suspicion of home quarantine protocol, the family, as well as their secondary contacts, will be included for contact tracing.
However, if a positive case is found from institutional/paid quarantine, the contact tracing will include mode of travel, co-passengers, driver among others and who will be identified and quarantined. Furthermore the support staff of the institutional quarantine facility/hotels that could have come in contact will be included for contact tracing and all symptomatic contacts will be tested.
Meanwhile, the second category, Local Contacts, will focus on cases from slum or non-slum areas that may indicate risk of community spread. For non-slum category positive cases, the contact tracing will cover all primary contacts like family members/close relatives, secondary contacts like places visited frequently and contacts of other family members.
Besides, travel and people who were in contact with them since the last 7-10 days will be monitored. The nearby households, shops/vendors will be put on quarantine and subjected to active surveillance for a minimum of 7 days. The ZDCs (Zonal District Commissioners) will keep all the quarantined homes identified for the positive case under strict vigilance with the help of local police and ensure that the inhabitants are adhering to the home quarantine guidelines.
“However, if a positive case is found in a slum area the contact tracing should be more exhaustive and aggressive,” the notification mentioned. “Teams will visit the area to identify a cluster to be created for putting all the families to home quarantine. The cluster should be created with adequate coverage of houses for quarantine. Active Surveillance will continue in the slum area for 7 to 14 days,” it added.