Kerala: Mass sample collection drive at Kattakkada from Thursday

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: A massive sample collection drive will begin at Kattakada panchayat on Thursday where an Asha worker was tested positive. The epidemiological investigation team has prepared an initial list of 430 contacts, which is still being expanded owing to the work profile of the worker.
Two mobile sample collection units will be deployed in Amachal and surrounding areas from Monday onwards and the process is expected to consume more than a week.
Owing to the large scope of contacts, the health team will confine sample collection to high-risk primary contacts, symptomatic primary contacts and secondary contacts. She had served at the ticket counter and queue management at hospital resulting in direct contact with many people. Special monitoring will be done for patients with influenza like illness (ILI) who come for treatment in health institutions in containment zones.
This will be for the third time that such a massive sample collection exercise is being done. The district administration and health team had collected a cluster of samples of those persons with ILI and that of contacts of two remand prisoners who were tested positive at Pullampara panchayat and Vamanapuram panchayat.
Four teams were deployed to collect samples of persons who have come into direct contact with the remand prisoners. The extensive travel history of the person from Kalamachal and spread of contacts across panchayats had forced authorities to declare over 90 wards in various panchayats as containment zones.
In three days, over 200 samples had been collected and sample collection could be completed in six days. In Pothencode the health team had collected nearly 220 samples after over 10 wards were brought under containment following the death of Abdul Azeez.
Meanwhile, the contact tracing team has learnt that the mobile shop owner, who tested positive for Covid-19, had travelled extensively in the past two weeks even to other districts. The team had to depend on police assistance to get information from his tower location and phone records to find out the travel history. Contacts have been identified at the apartment where he stayed, the shops he frequented and places he visited for business purposes. A retrospective tracking had to be done in the case the of mobile shop owner owing to the extensive travel history using phone records and direct information gathered from him.
As regarding the KSRTC driver at Pappanamcode depot who tested positive, the team has categorized passengers in the bus as low-risk contacts. While details of passengers who were transported from railway station to Covid-care homes are being compiled from official data, the information on other passengers who boarded the bus during line service is being expected through voluntary reporting. The officials said that the number of contacts in the case of the mobile shop owner and KSRTC driver has been lesser than they had anticipated and this would help a lot in sample collection and isolation.
Three more positive cases were reported in the district on Wednesday; a 37-year-old man from Pothencode, a 25-year-old man from Keezharur and a 26-year-old man from Karette. All of them had arrived from foreign countries.