Pune, Mar 18 :The spike in corona virus cases in several states across the country comes amid the second phase of India’s vaccination drive that covers people aged above 60 years and those above 45 years with co-morbidities.
The rise in Covid-19 active cases in parts of the country calls for “quick and decisive” steps to check the emerging second peak . Sixty per cent of the active cases in the country are in Maharashtra, according to Dr Naresh Purohit, Advisor-National Communicable Disease Control Programme.
Dr Purohit was speaking at a webinar today on changing nature and current status of covid -19 organised by Chennai based National Institute of Epidemiology.
Speaking to UNl renowned communicable disease expert Dr Purohit said that Maharashtra is in the beginning of second Covid-19 wave and it has been observed that there is no adherence to covid appropriate behaviour among people in rural and urban areas. There is a limited active effort to track, test, isolate cases and quarantine contacts also.
Quoting his recent scientific report published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Public Health , acclaimed Epidemiologist Dr Purohit said in the webinar that the covid test positivity rate was high, ranging from 51 per cent in Mumbai, 40 percent in Nagpur ,30 per cent in Aurangabad, implying that there are lot many cases that are not being tested and there is high transmission in the community.
Dr Purohit who is also the WHO- Covid-19 Technical lead said that in Maharashtra currently every single day records spike of new covid cases.
ln view of limited contact tracing, a large pool of asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic people among contacts are not tracked and tested.
“Based on the the covid positive cases data from the state health authorities, measures such as night curfews, weekend lockdowns have very limited impact suppressing the transmission ” added Dr. Purohit.
He urged the state to focus on strict containment strategies, strengthening surveillance and augmenting testing.
He stressed that testing must be considerably enhanced and protocol laid down by ICMR followed.
The absence of rigorous tracing, testing and containment is leading to sustained community transmission.
Dr Purohit in his published report stated that the case-contact ratio is more than 1:20 in Maharashtra and that the current case fatality was found to be very high among admitted cases in Government Medical Colleges of the state which needs to be investigated in detail, including sending samples for whole genome sequencing.
Dr Purohit suggested that containment strategy needs to be re-introduced, containment zones must be better defined based on contact listing, digital mapping of cases and contacts and should be much larger to include the area of influence of cases/ contacts.
“The buffer zones need to be delineated.
The perimeter control needs to be strictly enforced. For each containment zone, the rapid response teams should develop an operational plan” averred Dr Purohit.
Dr Purohit stressed on augmenting testing to bring the test positivity rate to less than 5 per cent and strengthening surveillance by active house to house search for active cases/contacts in containment zones.
Dr Purohit added that for every positive case, at least 20 to 30 close contacts (including family contacts, social contacts, workplace contacts and other casual contacts) need to be promptly traced and tracked and the practice of isolating 80-85 percent of active cases kept in home isolation needs to be reviewed
He stressed that mutations or variants in the corona virus have ‘immense escape mechanism’. They can threaten the immunity
achieved by a person through vaccinations or the disease and cause re-infection.
Dr Purohit pointed that vaccine hesitancy among frontline workers needs to be addressed as their services would be required if the trajectory follows the upward swing as is being witnessed now. The state should also expedite vaccinating those with co-morbidities and elderly.(UNI)