Centre notes state's virus situation, seeks reports
Source: Chronicle News Service

Imphal, July 07 2021: The Union government has written to the state government expressing grave concern by pointing out that presently Manipur has a weekly positivity of 12.9 per cent (June 28 - July 4) apart from and eight out of 16 districts reporting a positivity of more than 10 per cent.

According to the letter written by Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) secretary Rajesh Bhushan to chief secretary Dr Rajesh Kumar on Tuesday, although the trajectory of daily new cases of Covid-19 has fallen substantially in the country, there is a need for continued monitoring of weekly case positivity, as well as cases trajectory in each district to identify any early warning signals of spread of infection.

An analysis of Manipur's Covid cases has highlighted some critical areas of concern.

Although the state has shown a decline in new cases, two out of 16 districts (Bishnupur, Kangpokpi) are showing an increase in weekly new cases over past four weeks.

Six districts have also reported more than 100 new cases in the week ending July 4, it pointed out.

MoHFW observed that Bishnupur district has shown an increase in the number of weekly deaths in last four weeks (June 13- July 4).Imphal East and Imphal West have 17 and 28 deaths respectively in the week (June 28-July 4) which entails critical analysis on the district's deaths.

With regard to testing and positivity; Imphal East, Imphal West and Thoubal districts have more than 100 new cases in the week ending July 4 with a weekly positivity rate of more than 10 per cent.

"The mentioned points are a cause for concern and in order to not let the situation slip out of control, I would urge to focus on some points and take necessary action at the earliest," Rajesh Bhushan said.

MoHFW suggested strict containment measures saying it is the most crucial strategy of flattening the current curve.

It is critical to plan effective containment measures and implement them stringently and to strengthen all our efforts made for prompt contact tracing of the close contacts of positive cases and immediate quarantine isolation of all suspected and confirmed cases as per ministry guidelines, it said.

Testing needs to be ramped up as several districts are reporting high positivity rates, which reflect the level of widespread infection.

A microanalysis needs to be done of area showing high positivity (>10 per cent) during the past weeks.

Accordingly, all such areas should be targeted for increasing the testing exponentially while maintaining high proportion of RT-PCR tests.

The state should aim at maintaining positivity rate below 5 per cent in each district duly focusing on increasing number of tests so as to aid early identification, it advised.

MoHFW also stressed the need for healthcare infrastructure planning to ensure preparedness.

State must maintain continuous vigil regarding bed occupancy of critical beds (oxygen supported and ICU beds) and if the occupancy is more than 40 per cent for any bed category, the state should plan for augmentation of healthcare infrastructure in those districts.

Trained human resources, infrastructure, logistics and procurement should be planned considering the geographical spread of the pandemic.

It should also work towards ensuring timely disclosure of all infrastructure availability-based details on public portals or via media so as to avoid misinformation.

Stress should be on effective clinical management as with distressing rise in fatalities, authorities must turn to the clinical management protocol and focus on making it more effective, smooth and prompt.

It is important to monitor all cases under home isolation and put processes in place to ensure smooth hospitalisation of patients, in case the same is required.

All facilities also should be monitored with respect to the overall fatality, including deaths being reported between 24, 48 and 72 hours of hospitalisation to identify any weak spots and to undertake required corrective action, it continued.

MoHFW further emphasised on ramping up of vaccination and said that it must be used as an aid to the infection containment strategy.

Ramping up vaccination sites, improving the efficiency and utilisation of vaccination deploying strategic vaccination centres near the containment zones and now, ensuring speedier vaccination of all citizens aged 18 plus should be undertaken on a priority basis.

Covid Appropriate Behaviour needs to be enforced with levying effective fines on violation of social distancing or mask usage in public as well as stringent enforcement is critical to control the spread of infection further in the community, the letter asserted.

The MoHFW letter pointed out that as mentioned in the recent order (June 28), implementation framework was shared with all states/ UTs for intensive action and local containment in specific and well defined geographic units, to break and suppress the chain of infection.

This was also reiterated by the Union Ministry of Home Affairs on June 29 .

As such, the state should share the action taken report so far as per the directions issued under Disaster Management Act by MHA as mentioned above so as to ensure effective containment, the letter stressed.

Comment