Ministry of Health and Family Welfare
Union Minister of Health & Family Welfare Dr Harsh Vardhan, reviews the current status of COVID Surveillance with Lieutenant Governor of Delhi, Health Minister Delhi and others
Urges Health Surveillance Officers to do their work with due care and responsibility in a resolute fight against COVID-19 pandemic
The situation needs a multi-pronged containment strategy to deal with interconnected areas and having dense population—Dr. Harsh Vardhan
Union Minister of Health & Family Welfare, Dr. Harsh Vardhan, reviewed the current status of COVID Surveillance in Delhi with Lieutenant Governor, GNCTD Health Minister and senior surveillance and other officers from Central Government and Delhi Government in a meeting conducted through Video Conferencing in the presence of the Minister of State for Health & Family Welfare, Shri Ashwini Kumar Choubey, OSD Shri Rajesh Bhushan and many senior officers from the Ministry.
The Director,National Centre for Disease Control , Government of India, Dr. Sujeet Kumar Singh, gave a presentation on the current status of hotspots in Delhi as well as the areas of concern. Dr. Harsh Vardhan interacted with the concerned Surveillance Officers and District Magistrates to understand the measures being taken to contain as well as trace the spread of the disease in Delhi.
Indicating the situation across the country with respect to infection spread by COVID-19, Dr. Harsh Vardhan said, “All across the country, there are 307 districts in Green Zone, 297 in Orange and 128 in Red Zone; these are very dynamic numbers and keep changing on daily basis. There is a need to check it and bring more and more districts under Green Zones as soon as possible.” While talking about the assessment & classification of movement of districts from red zone to orange and further green zone, Dr. Harsh Vardhan said,“In fact there are 76 districts where there is no fresh case from the last 07 days, 45 districts where there is no fresh case from the last 14 days, 39 districts where there is no fresh case from the last 21 days and 17 districts where there is no fresh case from the last 28 days, which is a sign of improvement.” Talking about doubling rate he informed, “Today, the doubling rate stands at 10.9 over the last 03 days, 10.2 over the last 07 days and 8.7 over the last 14 days which indicates we are progressively moving towards better overallsituation day by day.”
Highlighting the situation in Delhi, he said, “There are 96 to 98 hotspots i.e. red zones in Delhi which are growing in number. This red colour on the Delhi map appals me. It needs to be brought down.” “The health workers, para-medical staff and Doctors becoming COVID-positive due to exposure, has been adversely affecting the health care system”, he said. “There is a need for outlining a Standard Operating Procedure  for discarding used PPEs and N95 masks so that there is no spread of infection.Health Care Audit of the healthcare facilities should also be undertaken on these lines”, he added.
He discussed in detail the situation of various districts with their respective DMs and suggested to modify their strategy and break the big containment zones into smaller ones for effective surveillance. He further asked them to make exclusive strategy for congested and dense areas to contain the movement of suspected infected persons on streets to prevent further spread of COVID-19.
The Union Minister informed the participants, “I had conducted a VC with all the AIIMS hospitals of the country, JIPMER, Puducherry and PGI Chandigarh, earlier, wherein I had exhorted them to take a leading role in guiding the country to contain COVID-19 effectively and go beyond their establishmentsand take their expertise through trained medical specialists to the field to contain the spread of deadly virus.” “I had also asked these institutes to provide the much-required handholding to the frontline medical workers at grass root level in their respective states, districts and local levels”, he said.“AIIMS, Delhi can supplement the COVID-19 treatment efforts across the country by providing consultation through its newly launched National Tele-consultation Centre  by connecting with Doctors from various medical facilities across the country in real time”, he said. “Similarly, a multi-pronged innovative strategy from the Officers and Health force of Delhi is needed to defeat COVID-19” he added.
At the end, Dr. Harsh Vardhan appreciated the works of District Magistrates and their innovative ways of finding solutions to mitigate COVID-19 and exhorted them to speed up their work in their respective districts. The Minister expressed happiness over the sincere efforts of the health workers in mitigating COVID-19. Further, he stressed on the need to review and expedite the testing and reporting procedure to make it more robust while at the same time scaling it up so as to meet the target of conducting one lakh tests per day by the end of next month.
The Additional Chief Secretary , GNCTD, Shri Satya Gopal,, Principal Secretary , GNCTD, Shri H. Rajesh Prasad, Secretary , GNCTD, Ms. Padmini Singla, DGHS, Government of India, Dr. Rajeev Garg, Director, AIIMS, Delhi, Dr. Randeep Guleria, Joint Secretary , Government of India, Ms. Gayatri Misra, Commissioners East/South/North MCD, District Magistrates and Deputy Police Commissioners of all districts in Delhi, Central/State/District Surveillance officers as well as Heads of Government Hospitals, both belonging to Central Government and Delhi Government, also participated in the meeting.