Dr VK Paul says Second Wave not over, practice COVID-19 prevention measures

Dr. VK Paul, Member of Niti Ayog at the Health Ministry briefing on Friday said the second wave was not over yet and no one would be safe until the whole country was safe as he urged the citizens to continue to practice the prevention measures for COVID-19.

Dr. VK Paul announced this as the states had been starting to unlock and easing the lockdown measures of the second wave which had proven to be deadlier than the first one.

The ‘Guiding Principles for Identification of districts which require the highest level of Restrictions’ state that districts with a weekly high case positivity of more than 10 percent should be identified, bed occupancy, oxygen, and ICU beds should be analyzed in regard to the availability of health infrastructure, there should be thorough monitoring in districts with high weekly case positivity or high bed occupancy, once the restrictions have been imposed then it would remain in force for a minimum period of 14 days, and relaxations might be provided only in the areas of the district which are not under containment.

The monitoring mechanism stated that the states had been advised to appoint a senior officer as the Nodal Officer for the districts, action should be taken for containment and health infrastructure upgradation, also microanalysis must be done based on the number of cases at the district level, and implementation of the Test-Track-Treat-Vaccinate strategy should be followed while ensuring the COVID-19 appropriate behavior was being followed.

Multi-Disciplinary teams have also been deputed by the Centre to Kerala, Arunachal Pradesh, Tripura, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, and Manipur in view of the increased number of COVID-19 cases which had been reported by these mentioned states.