Identify cause of Covid spike, rework strategy: Odisha CS to Collectors

Chief Secretary Asit Tripathy directed Collectors of different districts to identify the exact cause of the spike in coronavirus positive cases and roll out your area-specific strategy to contain it.

Tripathy's directions came while he was reviewing coronavirus situation district-wise with COVID observers and Collectors.

"The rate and cause of the spread in disease differ from one area to the other. The nature of spread in rural areas becomes different from that of the urban and city area. The border areas with neighbouring States also have their own uniqueness. The growth centres with adjoining villages may need a different approach," he said.

"As such, Collectors must rework their own district-specific strategies and should keep on updating the approaches with changing situations," he added.

He directed to contain spike of the disease in rural areas within a week.

"Since the COVID positive patients with co-morbidity are more vulnerable to grow serious, each district must have a robust strategy to pick them up to the hospitals at an early stage for proper treatment," Development Commissioner Suresh Chandra Mohapatra said.

Additional Chief Secretary Health and Family Welfare Pradeepta Kumar Mohapatra said an expert body with experienced medical professors is now functioning in the State for providing critical care advice to the doctors.

"The treating physicians in different districts should be in active contact with the expert team for containing the death rate," he said.

Chief Secretary Tripathy directed that the COVID hospitals should be kept free for treating the patients requiring critical care.

"A robust home isolation mechanism and frequent follow up with the patients by health personnel would be more helpful for the physical and mental health of the non-serious and asymptomatic cases, he said.

Additional Chief Secretary and Special Relief Commissioner Pradeep Kumar Jena advised encouraging home isolation of a-symptomatic or mild symptomatic positive cases, instead of burdening the COVID care centers and hospitals.

The review showed that the strategy adopted by the Ganjam district administration was effective in reducing the rate of infection in Ganjam, according to an official release.

Collector Ganjam Vijay Amruta Kulange appraised that the strategies like the intensive house to house survey, digitization of the survey data, identification of vulnerable persons with co-morbidity, dedicated call centers for incoming and outgoing calls, robust mechanism for frequent contact with positive cases on day to day basis, strict enforcement of containment zones while ensuring necessary services helped the district administration in containing the rate of infection.

Collectors of Rayagada, Sundargarh, Cuttack, Khordha along with Municipal Commissioner BMC presented updated situation with strategies being followed in their respective areas.