As India became the world’s second most COVID-affected nation, the Centre on Sunday decided to deploy high-level teams to Punjab and UT of Chandigarh, which has been witnessing a recent surge in Covid-19 cases and high mortality.
The high-level teams will assist in strengthening public health measures for containment, surveillance, testing and efficient clinical management of COVID patients with the aim to reduce mortality and save lives. They will also guide them in effectively addressing the challenges related to timely diagnosis and follow up.
The two-member teams will comprise of a Community Medicine expert from PGIMER, Chandigarh and an epidemiologist from NCDC. These teams shall be stationed in the State and UT for ten days to provide extended guidance in managing COVID.
Punjab has reported a total of 60,013 cases, whereas it has 15,731 active Cases, on date. It has registered 1,739 deaths. The Testing Per Million figure for the State is 37,546 (India’s average figure is 34,593.1 at present). With 4.97%, it hovers at the lower spectrum of cumulative positivity.
Chandigarh has reported 2,095 active cases whereas its cumulative cases stand at 5,268. Testing Per Million and cumulative positivity stand at 38,054 and 11.99%, respectively.
The Centre is actively supporting the States and UTs that are seeing a sudden surge in the number of COVID cases and those that are reporting high mortality by deputing multi-sectoral Central teams. Many such teams have visited several States/UTs in the past months. The States/UTs have been advised to proactively undertake comprehensive measures to break the chain of transmission of the infectious disease and lower the mortality below 1%.
India reported a record single-day spike of 90,632 new cases of coronavirus and 1,065 deaths in the last 24 hours. The COVID-19 tally in the country now stands at 41,13,811, while the death toll rose to 70,626
