BHUBANESWAR: As upscale residential areas continue to contribute maximum number of cases to the City’s Covid-19 tally, Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) on Saturday launched a three-week-long door-to-door surveillance in non-slum areas to contain spread of the virus effectively.
Officials said as part of the drive, a two-member team comprising an Ayush doctor and a female health worker or a teacher have started visiting each and every household in all the three zones of the civic body to find out flu-like symptoms, Covid symptoms, travel history and information about elderly people and children.
A total 42 teams each have been engaged in the North and South-West zones, while 55 teams have been assigned the work in South-East zone. “One team has to cover at least 100 households in each zone every day during the mega health exercise,” said Additional District Urban Public Health Officer CVSN Rao.
He requested the households to cooperate with the team during the survey and follow all safety guidelines including social distancing, wearing of mask and maintain hand hygiene. Besides, all the teams have been given thermal screening devise to check temperature and pulse oximeters to monitor a person’s oxygen saturation level, he said.
“The objective of the drive is to identify people with Covid-like symptoms, create a comprehensive database and get them tested to check spread of the virus effectively,” Rao said. BMC officials said the data collected during the survey can be used to map out areas that are reporting more cases to strengthen measures. For slum areas, the rapid response teams are continuing active surveillance on a regular basis.
480 fresh cases in Bhubaneswar
The State Capital reported another 480 new cases in the last 24 hours of which more than 65 per cent cases were from non-slum areas.
The new cases pushed the Covid-19 tally of the city to 15,845. The death toll of the city also increased to 60 during the period with two more fatalities.
Officials, however, said Bhubaneswar also reported 642 recoveries during the period, highest on a day so far, bringing down the number of active cases to 4,964.