The meeting held through video conference focused on strengthening containment, scaling up surveillance, testing and efficient clinical management of the positive cases. Union Minister of State (Independent Charge), Ministry of Development of North Eastern Region, Dr. Jitendra Singh also joined the meeting through video conference and gave valuable suggestion to curb the disease in an effective manner. Advisor Bhatnagar along with Central team members reviewed the status of preparedness for COVID management with district administrations and health department functionaries.
The Central team comprising Dr S K Singh, Director, National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) and Dr Vijay Hadda, Professor, Department of Pulmonary medicines, AIIMS, New Delhi guided the district administration in effectively managing challenges related to timely diagnosis and follow up. The Team suggested models of some states in order to flatten the pandemic curve and subsequently reduce the same. The team, however, asked the concerned to go for aggressive awareness campaign among the masses about the disease and ramp up more testing in contaminated zones.
The Central team laid thrust on intensifying sampling/ testing and enforcement of SOPs to bring about a social change towards health and hygiene. Earlier, the team interacted with State/UT authorities to get a firsthand understanding of the challenges and issues so as to give expert view point to remove the bottlenecks, if any.