NEW DELHI: The Union Health Ministry has decided to rush high-level Central teams to Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, and Odisha, the states which have been reporting a sudden surge in the number of Covid-19 cases and recording high mortalities over the last few days.
The teams will support the state efforts towards strengthening containment, surveillance, testing and efficient clinical management of the positive cases, the ministry said.
The central teams shall also guide the states in effectively managing the challenges related to timely diagnosis and follow up.
Each of the multi-sectoral teams will comprise an epidemiologist and a public health expert.
Of these four states, Uttar Pradesh has the maximum number of active cases pegged at 54,666, followed by Odisha (27,219), Chhattisgarh (13,520), and Jharkhand (11,577).
In terms of total confirmed cases to date, Uttar Pradesh has 2,25,632, Odisha has 1,00,934 cases, Jharkhand has 38,435 and Chhattisgarh has 30,092 cases.
The most number of deaths have been reported in Uttar Pradesh (3423), while Odisha, Jharkhand, and Chhattisgarh have registered 482, 410, and 269 deaths respectively.
As an ongoing effort, the Union government has been deputing Central teams from time to time to visit various states to interact with the authorities and get a first-hand understanding of the challenges and issues being faced by them so as to strengthen their ongoing activities and remove bottlenecks, if any.