Cabinet Secretary holds meet with officials of 13 worst-hit cities : The Tribune India

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Cabinet Secretary holds meet with officials of 13 worst-hit cities

A health official collects a swab sample in Hubli. PTI

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, May 28

Cabinet Secretary Rajiv Gauba today held a review meeting with municipal commissioners and District Magistrates (DMs) of 13 high Covid-hit cities of the country ahead of the completion of Lockdown 4.0 on May 31.

BREAKING CHAIN OF INFECTION

Along with containment zones, buffer zones around containment areas also must be demarcated to break the chain of transmission
Maintaining vigilance and monitoring in areas of old cities, urban slums and other high density pockets are some of the key factors for managing Covid in the high-risk areas

The meeting was also attended by the chief secretaries and principal secretaries (health) of 13 states and union territories. The exercise bears significance as the cities are considered to be the worst Covid-hit locations and constitute for about 70 per cent of the positive cases in the country.

A senior Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) official said the meeting took place through video-conferencing with the agenda of “public health response to Covid-19”.

The Municipal Commissioners of Mumbai, Thane, Pune (Maharashtra), Chennai (Tamil Nadu), Delhi/New Delhi (UT), Ahmedabad (Gujarat), Hyderabad (Telangana), Kolkata/Howrah (West Bengal), Indore (Madhya Pradesh), Jaipur, Jodhpur (Rajasthan), Chengalpattu and Thiruvallur (Tamil Nadu) attended the meeting, the official said. The District Magistrates of these districts were also present during the deliberations.

The measures taken by the officials and the staff of the MCs for the management of Covid cases were reviewed at the meeting. The Centre has already issued guidelines on the management of the pandemic in urban settlements.

The guidelines include work on high risk factors and indices such as confirmation rate, fatality rate, doubling rate, tests per million people etc., the official said.

The strategy defined the factors to be considered while mapping the containment and buffer zones, the activities mandated in containment zones like perimeter control, active search for cases through house-to-house surveillance, contact tracing, testing protocol and clinical management of the active cases.