Centre tells Maharashtra to conduct door-to-door TB survey as well amid rising COVID cases

Union Health Minister Dr. Harsh Vardhan on Thursday held a high-level meeting via video conference with Maharasthra Health Minister Rajesh Tope, Medical Education Minister Amit Deshmukh and district magistrates of COVID-19 affected districts in state to review COVID-19 situation in Maharashtra. He directed state government to ensure active tuberculosis survey along with house-to-house COVID-19 surveys.

'Active survey for TB cases should be done'

According to an official statement, Dr. Harsh Vardhan said, " state must ensure that essential services for TB diagsis and manment do t suffer as se patients are very much prone to COVID-19 infection. Active survey for TB cases should be done along with house to house surveys being conducted for COVID-19."

Director of National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) SK Singh made a presentation on COVID-19 outbreak status in Maharashtra highlighting districts that were showing a higher number of active cases, case fatality rate, confirmation rate, doubling time and low testing rate.

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Maharashtra was advised to ensure prohibition of spitting in public places to control spread and take strict action against offenders. Adequate measures for prevention of vector-borne diseases also need to be taken, state authorities were advised. Dr. Harsh Vardhan also told state officials that testing labs should ensure prompt delivery of reports of COVID-19 tests to help in timely detection and manment of patients.

"We have ramped up our testing capacity through a network of 602 government labs and 235 private labs (total 837 labs). We have cumulatively tested 52,13,140 samples till date and 1,51,808 samples were tested in last 24 hours," he added.

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Health Minister also highlighted need for strengning human resource for contact tracing, logistics enhancement like ICU beds with ventilators, beds with facility available for oxygen supplementation, etc. and strengning behaviour change communication activities to reduce community resistance and counselling of high-risk contacts, according to official statement.

state was also advised to ensure focus on essential RMNCHA+N (Reproductive, Maternal, Newborn, Child, Adolescent Health Plus Nutrition) services with special care for pregnant women along with services like blood collection/transfusion, chemorapy, dialysis.

Maharasthra reported 3,607 new coronavirus cases and 152 deaths on Thursday, taking total number of positive cases in state to 97,648. 

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(With ncy inputs)