'Maharashtra witnessing second COVID-19 wave, need to step up contact tracing'

The Centre warned Maharashtra on Tuesday that the state is witnessing a beginning of the second wave of the Covid19 pandemic and asked the state government to focus on containment strategies and scale up the pace of vaccination campaign especially in districts witnessing a sharp increase in infectionsIssuing a letter to Maharashtras Chief Secretary Sitaram Kunte which is based on the assessment of the central govt team the Union Health Ministry has urged the state to bring down its positivity rate and step up contacttracingThe letter enclosed the analysis of the pandemic in Maharashtra by a central team which was deputed there to assess the situation on the groundThe team noted the lack of Covid19appropriate behaviour and tracking and testing of cases as the prime reason behind the infection surge apart from the apathy of the district administration to implement already prescribed measures for transmission controlMaharashtra is at the beginning of the second wave of Covid19 pandemic There is very limited active effort to track test isolate cases and quarantine contacts There is no adherence to Covidappropriate behaviour among people both in rural and urban areas the Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan warned in the letterHe also pointed out that eight of the top 10 districts of India in terms of active Covid19 infections are in Maharashtra and the only way to curb the spread is to increase the pace of vaccinationCovid19 pandemic in the recent past has shown a rising trend in Maharashtra where the number of active cases has increased by 171537 over the last one month from 36917 cases on February 11 2021 to 100240 cases on March 11 2021 Bhushan wrote to KunteThe letter also noted that the number of people testing positive was high ranging from 5137 in Mumbai to 3037 in Aurangabad implying that many cases were not being tested and there is high transmission in the communityThe report by the central team revealed that the main concept of contact tracing was not clearly understood by the field level staffDue to limited contact tracing a large pool of asymptomatic and presymptomatic people was not being tracked and tested said the letter suggesting that testing be considerably enhanced according to protocol laid down by the Indian Council of Medical ResearchIt was found that the staff were mainly listing the immediate family and neighbourhood contacts for the sake of listing The highrisk contacts in workplace settings social settings and family settings were not investigatedThe monitoring of the contacts was limited to conveying the message to the highrisk contacts for testing the very next day and not as per the ICMR guidelines the teams analysis revealedThere was no effort to map the cases and contacts and notify the containment zone with perimeter control as to contain or suppress transmission it addedThe team observed no adherence to Covidappropriate behaviour among people both in rural and urban areas This was conspicuous both for physical distancing and for use of masksface covers There should be persuasive communication to sustain adherence to Covidappropriate behaviour the report saidThe central team also pointed to the lack of human resource to implement test track isolate and treat policy for Covid positive cases As the health staff too is preoccupied with vaccine administration there is the limited human resource for the surveillance and contact tracing activities it reportedBesides the team also found a lackadaisical approach of the district administrations to manage the situation on the ground The District Administration is not much worried about the evolving situation We could sense a feeling that enough has been done already This complacency may take its toll it concludedThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever