BHUBANESWAR: Even as active Covid-19 cases hover around 100 and daily caseload remains below 10, the Odisha government has asked district authorities to step up surveillance and maintain the testing target in view of a surge in other states.
The Directorate of the Public Health has alerted all local administrative authorities, including municipal commissioners, collectors and CDMOs to enhance precautionary measures. A set of guidelines has been issued to keep a close vigil on people coming from high burden countries and states.
Director of Public Health, Dr Niranjan Mishra said the districts have been advised to regularly review new cases/clusters, case positivity, population affected, geographical spread of cases and hospital infrastructure preparedness. “Surveillance on ILI and SARI will be continued as before as part of an early warning system for detecting rise of cases besides in-house strengthening of testing, surveillance and treatment mechanism to face any upsurge of cases,” he said.
The local authorities will also continue periodic surveillance of high-risk and vulnerable population like healthcare providers, educational institutions and residential hostels and enforce Covid protocol.
The guidelines were issued in the wake of sudden rise in new Covid cases and positivity rate in Delhi and some other north Indian states. Odisha reported eight new cases and one death in the last 24 hours.
Meanwhile, the Centre has flagged sub-optimal performance of the State in administration of second dose and precautionary dose among the 60 years plus population and asked the State government to accelerate the booster dose for senior citizens through door-to-door campaign.
An analysis of CoWIN database shows that around 6,43,450 beneficiaries aged 60 years and above are due for second dose while another 6,47,051 beneficiaries above 60 years are due for precautionary dose.
Union Additional Secretary of Health and Family Welfare Manohar Agnani has urged Additional Chief Secretary of State Health department RK Sharma to revive the ongoing Covid-19 vaccination drive through a detailed plan at district-level to cover all senior citizens due for second dose and precautionary dose.