Union Health Ministry has advised Telangana government to maintain a strict watch and to take up pre-emptive action to prevent spread of COVID-19 infection in view of spike in new cases.
Union Health and Family Welfare Secretary Rajesh Bhushan in a letter to State Health Secretary S. A.M Rizvi on Friday has said that Telangana has reported an increase in weekly new cases from 287 cases in the week ending (May 27) to 375 cases in the week ending June 3 accounting to 1.78 % of India’s new cases. The State has also seen an increase in positivity in the last week from 0.4 % to 0.5 %.
Mr. Bhushan said a sustained and significant decline in the number of COVID-19 cases has been observed in India over the past three months. However, from the past one week, a slight surge in the cases is being noticed with 15,708 cases reported in week ending May 27 rising to 21,055 cases reported in week ending on Friday.
There are a few States which are reporting a higher contribution to India’s cases indicating the possibility of a localised spread of infection. There is, therefore, a need to follow a risk assessment-based approach on the public health responses without losing the gains made so far in the fight against the pandemic.
The letter asked the government to continue implementation and monitoring of necessary measures for prompt and effective management of COVID-19 and to ensure compliance with various advisories issued by the Ministry.
The five-fold strategy, i.e, Test-Track-Treat Vaccination should be followed with continued focus on COVID appropriate behaviour, monitoring cluster of new COVID-19 cases, adequate testing as per guidelines, monitoring of influenza-like illness (ILI) and SARS2 cases in all facilities on a regular basis for directing early warning signals of the spread of infection, Genomic sequencing for prescribed samples of international passengers, collection of samples from sentinel sites (identified health facilities) and local clusters of cases.
