KOCHI: With the number of local transmission cases of Covid-19 posing a major challenge in the district, the rural police and health department have chalked out an action plan to contain the spread.As part of this, the rural police have accelerated the contact tracing of Covid patients by deploying a surveillance police officer in each police station to work with the health department. The officer will be in charge of preparing the route map, identifying primary, secondary and tertiary contacts of the patients.
“Contact tracking of the Covid patient is one of the key factors in containing the spread. Some patients may not have a clear memory of the areas they had visited and people they had come in contact with before they are confirmed with the infection. An investigative mind is required to track all these with the help of available information. Hence, we have deployed a special officer each in all police stations for identifying the primary and secondary contacts.
The officer will work along with the health department to immediately trace contacts and put them under quarantine,” said K Karthik, District Police Chief (Rural).
As per the statistics available with the rural police as of Monday, 5,134 people are under home quarantine and 159 under treatment. Since the first week of June, 72,013 persons have reached the district from abroad and 42,837 from other states.
“We have constituted a special wing for contact tracing and coordination purpose. The team will track all contacts of the Covid patients. The system seems to be working fine as we have been able to track down people and isolate them since the virus started spreading from a person who is associated with the Aluva market,” said Karthik.
Meanwhile, the rural police also use the help of Happy@Home app to keep track of the quarantined people and verify whether they are complying with the protocol. “We are maintaining daily contact with these people and assessing their conditions using the app,” he added.