Plan Advance Response, Enforce Covid Guidelines: Centre To Union Territories

The Centre on Tuesday advised all union territories to ensure strict enforcement of COVID-appropriate behaviour along with restrictions on movement and large gatherings, an official statement said.

The Union Territories were also asked to ramp up testing and augment hospital infrastructure while planning COVID response measures in advance for the next three weeks, the Union health ministry said in its statement.

The measures were suggested at a high-level meeting chaired by Union Home Secretary Ajay Kumar Bhalla along with Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan, and attended by chief secretaries of all Union Territories, to review the COVID-19 situation and the response strategy, it said.

The meeting, held through videoconferencing, was also attended by Member (Health) NITI Aayog Dr VK Paul, and DHR Secretary and research agency ICMR DG Dr Balram Bhargava. The director generals of police of all Union Territories were also present at the meeting, it added.

During the meeting, the Union Territories were advised to increase RT-PCR testing along with the use of rapid antigen tests (RAT) for screening in clusters, the statement said.

Urgent review of clinical management was strongly recommended along with ramping up testing and hospital infrastructure, it added.

Mr Bhalla pointed out the steep growth in the number of cases all across the country.

From 20,000 cases reported on January 1, India has been reporting almost 10 times more cases (more than 2,00,000 cases) daily since April 15, the statement said.

In the last 11 days, new cases have almost doubled from 1.31 lakh April 9 to 2.73 lakh April 20, it said.

Through a detailed and comprehensive presentation, the current trajectory of total new COVID-19 cases, weekly tests, weekly positivity rate, weekly new cases, weekly number of deaths and status/proportion of RT-PCR tests and RATs in all UTs were presented, the statement said.

The Union Territories shared their present efforts for containment and management of the positive cases. Ladakh, Jammu and Kashmir, and Lakshadweep pointed to the rise in cases due to a large number of inbound travellers, it said.

Lakshadweep has seen a sudden spike in COVID-19 cases after April 14 primarily due to a large number of people travelling to the mainland to shop for the recent festive occasions, it added.