NEW DELHI, Nov 19: In view of the surge in the daily new cases, the union ministry of health and family welfare has deputed high level central teams to Haryana, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Manipur. With the increase in the daily new cases and the spike in the daily fatalities in Delhi, the spillover effect is being observed in the NCR regions within the states of Haryana and Rajasthan where the number of COVID positive patients is on the rise, an official spokesman of the ministry said on Thursday.
Dr Randeep Guleria, Director, AIIMS New Delhi is leading the three-member team bound for Harayana and Dr V K Paul, Member (Health), Niti Aayog is heading the Rajasthan team, whereas Dr S K Singh, Director (NCDC) will be leading the Gujarat team. Dr L Swasticharan, Addl DDG, DHGS is heading the Manipur team.
The teams will visit the districts reporting high number of COVID cases and support the State efforts towards strengthening containment, surveillance, testing, infection prevention and control measures, and efficient clinical management of the positive cases.
The Central teams shall also guide in effectively managing the challenges related to timely diagnosis and follow up.
The spokesman said as against the national positivity rate as on Thursday of 6.97% of the 89.58 lakh total cases recorded, it was 6.81% in Haryana, 6.36% in Manipur, 6.26% in Rajasthan and 3.09% in Gujarat. In the rate of fatalities, Gujarat was even above the national average which at present was 1.47% while it 1.99% in Gujarat, 1.04% in Manipur, 1.01& in Haryana and 0.90% in Rajasthan, the spokesman said.
The Union Government has been leading the fight against the global pandemic with a ‘Whole of Government’ and ‘Whole of Society’ approach under the umbrella strategy of ‘Cooperative Federalism’. As an ongoing effort to strengthen efforts of various State/UT Governments for COVID management, the Central Government has been deputing Central teams from time to time to visit various States/UTs. These teams interact with the State/UT authorities and get a first-hand understanding of the challenges and issues being faced by them so as to strengthen their ongoing activities and remove bottlenecks, if any, the spokesman clarified.
(Manas Dasgupta)