Accelerate testing, step up surveillance: Odisha government to districts  

BHUBANESWAR:  The State government on Friday asked the districts and municipal corporations to accelerate testing and intensify surveillance following an uptick in Covid cases in the last two days.
After a review of the situation by Additional Chief Secretary (ACS) of Health department Raj Kumar Sharma, CDMOs have been directed to take appropriate measures for RT-PCR tests of all symptomatic people visiting hospitals and monitor the ILI and SARI cases on a regular basis for detecting early warning signals of spread of infection.

The direction came a day after Odisha recorded a two-fold rise in new infections. While the daily testing had come down from a range of 20,000 to 10,000 a week back, it has been decided to scale it up to 15,000 and then 20,000 based on the demand from the people.

Director of Public Health Dr Niranjan Mishra said the CDMOs have been asked to form RRT teams, keep all health facilities ready for swab collection and initiate containment measures wherever there is a cluster outbreak. “Every district should have an action plan ready in tackling sudden upsurge of cases. Samples of those detected Covid positive in different clusters with appropriate CT value will be sent for genome sequencing,” he said.

The health authorities have also stressed on Covid vaccination urging people due for second dose and precautionary dose to get inoculated. The ACS has appealed to people to wear masks while going to crowded places, practice Covid appropriate behaviour and avoid mass congregations.

Although Odisha is better placed as compared to other states where Covid cases are on the rise, Sharma said, the government is prepared with all apparatus to tackle the surge, if any. Meanwhile, the State reported 20 new cases from five districts in the last 24 hours pushing the active cases to 125. Maximum 11 cases were from Khurda, followed by two each from Balasore and Sundargarh. At least 10,400 tests were conducted during the period and the test positivity rate stood at 1.19 per cent. However, no Covid death has been reported in the State since May 1.