As COVID Cases Surge In 6 States, Health Ministry Rushes Teams To Monitor Situation; Know All About It

The Central teams will assess the situation and recommend remedial actions on public health activities to the respective governments of the 6 states.

Representative Photo: PTI

New Delhi: The Union government on Friday deputed multi-disciplinary teams to 6 states that are reporting the high number of COVID-19 cases to carry out a targeted response and management, and effectively tackled the pandemic, a Union Health Ministry statement informed.

The teams will monitor the COVID situation and also suggest remedial actions.

Kerala, Arunachal Pradesh, Tripura, Odisha, Chhattisgarh and Manipur are the 6 states where Union Health Ministry will be sending its two-member high-level teams that include a clinician and a public health expert.

The statement informed that the teams will visit the states immediately and monitor the overall implementation of COVID-19 management, especially in testing, including surveillance and containment operations; COVID Appropriate Behaviour and its enforcement; availability of hospital beds, sufficient logistics including ambulances, ventilators, medical oxygen etc., and COVID-19 vaccination progress.

The Central teams will assess the situation and recommend remedial actions on public health activities to the respective state governments.

As per the statement, the team to Manipur will be led by "Dr. L Swasticharan, Additional DDG and Director EMR; team to Arunachal Pradesh will be led by Dr Sanjay Sadhukhan, Professor AIIH & PH; for Tripura Dr. RN Sinha; for Kerala Dr. Ruchi Jain, Public Health Specialist Gr. II, RoHFW; for Odisha Dr. A Dan, Public Health Specialist AIIH & PH and for Chhattisgarh Dr. Dibakar Sahu, Assistant Professor, AIIMS Raipur".

The Union Government has been constituting Central teams from time to time to visit various states and UTs in efforts to tackle surges in Coronavirus cases.

These teams interact with the state and UT 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, the statement read.

COVID Situation In Kerala

Speaking about the Coronavirus cases in the state, Kerala Health Minister said: "We are conducting targeted tests in the state, and this is the reason behind the high number of new cases. We are trying to vaccinate more people. At least 85 percent of the total population needs to be vaccinated to manage the possible third wave of COVID-19".

"We ensured that deaths in hospitals are reported within 24 hours, these numbers are compiled to give the total number of deaths in a district. We ensure maximum transparency. Our death rate is at 0.4 percent," she added.

Talking to news agency ANI, Veena George also reported vaccine shortage in the state saying, "We do have a shortage of vaccines. Today, the total vaccines present are around 7 lakh. We have the infrastructure to vaccinate 2.5 lakh people each day. We are asking the Centre to provide us with more vaccines. Wastage of vaccine in Kerala is in negative".

Meanwhile, India’s cumulative COVID Vaccination coverage crossed the mark of 34 crores on Friday. 34,00,76,232 vaccine doses were administered, as per the provisional report till 7 am. 42 Lakh (42,64,123) vaccine doses were administered in the last 24 hours.

On July 1, out of total 42,64,123 vaccine doses that were administered, 32,80,998 beneficiaries were vaccinated for the first dose and 9,83,125 beneficiaries received their second dose of the COVID vaccine.