Covid-19 pandemic: States should learn from ‘successful Delhi model’, says Centre

Mukesh Ranjan

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Tribune News Service

New Delhi, July 17

Identifying people’s tendency to hide infection as an emerging big challenge, officials in the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) said the Centre is actively encouraging the states to rope in civil society in a big way to ensure “last mile connectivity in testing and contact tracing” COVID-19 infections.

Asking them to learn lessons from the “successful Delhi model” in containing spread of COVID-19 infections, they said the civil society participation in dealing with pandemic in the National Capital helped authorities in reducing “fear and scare” around the deadly virus and also enhancing the infrastructural need for “treating and caring” infected person.

According to the data available with the MHA, there were only 9,937 COVID-care beds on June 14, but today there are over 30,000 beds available, which include 10,000 at Sardar Patel COVID Care Centre, which was built on the campus of Radhaswami Asram here, around 8,000 in the rail coaches provided by the Railways and 1,000 odds by Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO).

“Like Radhaswami Ahram, states too have campuses of religious groups and sects. We are asking state administrations to look into the possibility of roping them in their fight against Covid-19, as most of them are vacant these days,” a senior official said.

“The fear and scare have set in among the massage because of their lack of confidence in the system that could treat them well.  Therefore, people prefer to hide their infection status and thereby it becomes difficult in breaking the infection chain,” he said.

Contact tracing and testing are key to effectively deal with the pandemic and in this exercise, the civil society, being flexible in its approach and also instilling belongingness among the masses , can play a big role, they added.

In Delhi, on the direction of Home Minister Amit Shah, a massive door-to-door survey was conducted in a time-bound manner and in the exercise “NGOs, RWAs, NCC, NSS teams and faith leaders were made part of it, the officials said.