Special team tracks ILI, SARI patients, gets them tested

Noida: By monitoring the number of patients with influenza-like illness (ILI) and severe acute respiratory infection (SARI) in about 70 hospitals every day, a special team set up in Noida has been able to trace 280 patients who had Covid-19.
After going over the reports sent by hospitals, the team gets in touch with symptomatic people who have not been tested yet. “About 10% of those tracked by the team tested positive. Those with ILI and SARI symptoms make up a large share of the district’s cases,” said Narendra Bhooshan, nodal officer for Covid response in the district.
The team started working on May 5 and, initially, got in touch with all 400-odd hospitals in the district. Then, it shortlisted 80 hospitals that had over 20 beds each and called those every day for a report on such patients. “We got in touch with these hospitals every day and gave them two forms to submit at the end of the day,” said Rhythm Kataria, who is part of the team. “One was a Google form, asking how many ILI and SARI patients came in each day. We asked them to report even when there were zero cases. The second form sought information about suspected patients — name, contact information, address, when the symptoms showed up, when they were tested, when the report is expected. With constant follow-ups, we get reports from about 65-70 hospitals a day.”
Over the past two days, Kataria added, the team expanded its base further to include 150 top hospitals in Noida. So far, about 550 SARI and 2,250 ILI patients have been reported.
After getting the case details, the team gets to work. Usually, about half the patients are found to have been tested already. Information about the rest, those who have not been tested yet, is passed on to the surveillance team. It calls patients from the 1800-419-2211 helpline, doctors check on their health status and ask them to get tested, if required.
“Under ICMR guidelines, all SARI and symptomatic ILI patients have to be tested,” Kataria said. The last ICMR guidelines for testing were issued on May 18, which said all ILI symptomatic people with international travel history in the past 14 days, ILI symptomatic contacts of Covid-19 patients, ILI symptomatic healthcare and frontline workers, ILI symptomatic people in containment zones, ILI symptomatic migrant workers who return to home states, hospitalised patients who develop ILI symptoms and all SARI patients should be tested.
But such patients, officials said, have been underreported by hospitals. In many cases, those with mild symptoms are not reported by hospitals, even in their own records, they added.
“We request all hospitals that have patients with such symptoms to report them to the CMO’s office, even if these are smaller nursing homes and clinics that have not been contacted yet. People who have symptoms should also call the helpline 1800-419-2211 and report their symptoms. This reporting is critical in our fight against Covid-19 to identify positive patients at an early stage,” said Kataria.