Telangana Health teams in districts bordering neighbouring States are taking COVID-19 sample collection kits to people’s doorstep. Other measures such as fever survey and home isolation are being enforced to contain the resurgence of the virus.
District Medical and Health Officers (DMHO) in Kamareddy, Adilabad, and other districts said they have set up check posts, and are sending medical teams to villages as well as testing contacts of coronavirus-positive patients.
Health Minister Eatala Rajender directed officials on Friday to stay alert as COVID cases are seeing a spurt in neighbouring States.
Health officials use ICU admission of COVID-19 patients as a yardstick to measure the resurgence. ICU admissions in government and private hospitals has been hovering between 340 and 360 a day from March 1 to 12.
Surge in two States
Telangana, a land-locked State, shares its border with Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. Of the four neighbouring States, cases are surging in Maharashtra and Karnataka.
Instructions on preventing spread of the virus were issued to DMHOs in Nizamabad, Kamareddy, Nirmal, Adilabad, Asifabad, Mancherial, Jayashankar Bhupalapally and Jagtial. The mantra of tracking, testing and isolating is being followed just like it was done around the same time last year.
P. Chandra Shekar, DMHO of Kamareddy, which shares border with Maharashtra, said that they formed check posts at the State border. Temperature of those coming from the neighbouring States is checked. If it is high, a Rapid Antigen Test is performed. If it is normal, they are allowed to proceed after sharing the address they are headed. “Auxiliary Nursing Midwives (ANMs) are informed and they track the people for a week to 10 days,” he said.
The DMHOs have been instructed to also ramp up testing. From March 1 to 12, a maximum of 4,1000 samples collected across the State have been tested daily. The new direction is to increase it to 50,000 a day.
While people getting down at railway stations and bus stops in Kamareddy are being tested on a random basis, regardless of symptoms, ANMs and ASHAs in Adilabad have been directed to conduct fever surveys through home-to-home visits. The health staff collect 10 samples from each village.
Since people are not coming to Primary Health Centres to undergo the tests, Health teams are sent to villages where positive cases are detected. Precautionary measures in the district were activated from February.
“The main target for testing are primary contacts of COVID-positive persons. Thereafter, tests are conducted on others too even if they are not a contact of a positive case and do not show any symptoms. This could lead to detection of more cases, but spread of the virus can be contained,” Adilabad DMHO Narender Rathod said.
Though Jagtial is not a border district, Health teams there are on alert since people from there keep migrating to Mumbai and Dubai for work, said DMHO P. Sridhar. He added that those coming from Maharashtra have to be in isolation for 14 days. ANMs and ASHAs keep track of them.
