A high level Central team in presence of Advisor to Lieutenant Governor Rajiv Rai Bhatnagar, today reviewed and discussed Covid-19 Control measures in Jammu division with Divisional Commissioner, Deputy Commissioners and senior health Department functionaries in the backdrop of recent spike in the positive cases.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. Jatendra 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.“We have to manage this through Non pharmaceutical measures including COVID Appropriate behavior, Mask wearing etiquettes and following the SOPs set for the COVID-19 containment”, they saidThe Team also stressed on Study of Trajectory of cases, Swasthya Nidhi Survey and called for making the Health analysis public through press.Further, the team members called for death audit and gave suggestions to analyze the data of COVID-19 patients coming from homes and from COVID Care Centres in order to study the fatalities and the causes into the delay while reaching hospitals, if any.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.The meeting was attended by Financial Commissioner Health and Medical Education, Atal Dulloo, MD National Health Mission J&K, Bhupinder Kumar, Principal Government Medical College Jammu Dr. Naseeb Chand and senior functionaries of Health Department and Medical College.Speaking on the occasion, Advisor Bhatnagar suggested for synergized efforts of administration and Health functionaries to flatten the pandemic curve and reduce it with the best COVID management practices.Earlier, Financial Commissioner Health and Medical Education briefed the visiting team on the current status of COVID-19 in Jammu division and the steps being taken up to contain the spread of the virus in the region.