Door-to-door surveillance launched

Thiruvananthapuram: The health team in Chirayinkeezhu taluk is making use of mini-lockdown to initiate home-based rapid surveillance to identify and isolate symptomatic persons in households. The drive has begun at Vakkom panchayat which has recorded the second highest test positivity rate (TPR) among local bodies in the district in the past seven days. A total of 94 cases have been detected in Vakkom panchayat in Chirayinkeezhu taluk out of 222 samples in a week. The TPR of 42.34% is second to Venganoor panchayat with a weekly TPR of 46.28%.
“Vakkom panchayat already runs a scheme Arogya Bhavanam where we have a group of trained health workers and medical professionals who do door-to-door surveillance for various types of diseases. The plan is to employ the same team for Covid surveillance. Faster we identify, more we will be able to check the spread of infection,” said nodal officer of Chirayinkeezhu taluk Dr Ramakrishna Babu.
A 24-hour control room has also been set up at Vakkom panchayat by which a trained Asha worker with local knowledge of households will be available for any emergency calls. She will act as the connection point between the patients and the hospitals. The presence of a local-level monitoring system is expected to boost the surveillance in the area.
The process being implemented at Vakkom is planned to be launched in other parts of the taluk as well. A year ago, following widespread community transmission in the coastal panchayat of Anchuthengu a similar testing strategy was implemented by the health team.
In August 2020, over 1,300 samples were collected at Anchuthengu in three days of relentless testing. It yielded more than 300 cases. This was made possible by the coordination of human resources, including members of Varkala IMA, block panchayat officials and staff of private hospitals. The panchayat president and heads of standing committees, who had tested negative, repeated tests after tracking of symptoms yielded positive results.
The major outcome of increased testing was that the team could isolate a good number of persons under observation. Cross-village spread to areas like Varkala, Vakkom, Chirayinkeezhu and Kadakkavoor could be effectively checked using this strategy in 2020.
Mudakkal panchayat in Chirayinkeezhu taluk is another area of concern. Since April, positive cases have been climbing in this panchayat and cases are more concentrated in three colonies. “We are closely following the pattern of infection and so far it has been confined to three densely-populated colonies in the area,” said Babu.
A total of 104 samples tested positive out of over 500 samples at Mudakkal in one week. Lack of sufficient number of testing kits is a major hindrance to the project. The officials said that they plan to tide over the shortage soon with the help of local bodies and health department.