Thiruvananthapuram launches area-specific random tests to contain COVID spread

The Thiruvananthapuram district administration in Kerala has introduced area-specific random sampling as part of sentinel surveillance amid the ongoing battle against the Coronavirus virus. A district COVID War Room has also been started in City's Collectorate for daily monitoring and reviewing of the situation.

Speaking to ANI, District Collector Navjot Khosa said that area-specific sampling is part of a three-pronged revised strategy to contain the COVID-19 spread.

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"As the state capital, we have to be more vigilant than others as there are a lot of people coming from various places. From last one week, there were cases where we could not identify the source of infection and out of it, we have five active cases. So we have now revised our strategy. The new strategy is three-pronged. The first will be to strengthen the surveillance. For that, we are starting a district COVID war room. We will be having a daily morning and evening review and monitoring. The most important aspect now is to trace and isolate. I will be also personally monitoring it," she said.

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'Will ramp up testing and area-specific testing'

District Collector Khosa further added that the district administration will ramp up testing and area-specific testing giving priority to crowded places is being launched.

"There is already a testing protocol in place. We carry out routine surveillance testing and pooled sentinel surveillance. Since it's the corporation area which is densely populated and the last four of the five cases were reported in the corporation limit. We have decided to conduct area-specific random sampling. For that, we are selecting certain wards. This will be an exercise which will go on for some time. We will be focusing on thickly populated wards," the District Collector said.

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She further disclosed that the plan is to start from wards where home quarantine is higher in number as the patients are asymptomatic. Random sampling will be done in places that are mostly crowded and seven mobile testing vehicles will be used in the periphery of the district so that people needn't come to the town for testing.

The third strategy is to decentralise testing centres. "Instead of everybody coming to town and waiting there for the test, we have strengthened the Taluk hospitals. We have a human resource there and we have linked transport facility. Also, we have carried out a detailed infrastructure planning to manage if and when a surge in cases happens. We have prepared a plan submitted to state disaster management authority," she added.

She also urged the people to follow the SOP issued by the state government to curb the infection.

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(With inputs from ANI)(Image ANI)