Bhubaneswar: With an aim to blunt the continuous spike in Covid positive cases in many districts, Chief Secretary Asit Tripathy has asked Collectors to identify the exact causes of the rise in positive cases and revise their strategies to contain it.
Tripathy evening gave this direction while taking a district wise review of the pandemic on a digital mode with Covid observers and Collectors Thursday.
“The rate and cause of spread differ from area to area. The nature of spread in rural area is different from that of urban and city areas. The border areas with neighboring states also have their own uniqueness. The growth centers with adjoining villages may need a different approach. As such, Collectors must rework their own district specific strategies and should keep updating the approaches with changing situations,” he said. The Collectors were directed to contain the spike of the disease in rural areas within a week.
Stating that Covid hospitals should be kept free for treating the patients requiring critical care, he said, “A robust home isolation mechanism and frequent follow up with the patients by health personnel would be more helpful for physical and mental health of non-serious and asymptomatic cases.”
Development Commissioner Suresh Chandra Mohapatra, who was also present at the meet, said, “Since Covid positive patients with co-morbidity are vulnerable to grow serious, each district must have a robust strategy to pick them up to the hospitals at an early stage for proper treatment.”
Additional Chief Secretary Health and Family Welfare Pradeepta Kumar Mohapatra said, “An expert body with experienced medical professors is now functioning in the state for providing critical care advice to doctors. The treating physicians in different districts should be in active contact with the expert team for containing the death rate.”
Special Relief Commissioner (SRC) PK Jena sought to encourage home isolation of a-symptomatic or mild symptomatic positive cases instead of burdening the Covid care centers and hospitals.
A review showed that the strategy adopted by Ganjam district administration was effective in reducing the rate of infection in the district.
Ganjam Collector Vijay Amruta Kulange said the strategies like intensive house to house survey, digitization of the survey data, identification of vulnerable persons with co-morbidity, dedicated call centers for incoming and outgoing calls, strict enforcement of containment zones while ensuring necessary services helped the district administration in containing the rate of infection.
The Collectors of Rayagada, Sundargarh, Cuttack, Khurda along with Bhubaneswar municipal commissioner presented updated situation with strategies being followed in their respective areas.