MHA Mandates Contact Tracing Of All Covid-19 Cases In Delhi; To Conduct Random Serological Survey From 27 June

In a high-level meeting chaired by Union Minister for Home Affairs Amit Shah yesterday (21 June), the home ministry mandated contact tracing and quarantining of all the contacts of Covid-19 infected persons with the help of Aarogya Setu smartphone application, reports Livemint.

The third such meeting chaired by Shah since taking the de-facto charge of the national capital's fight against the pandemic, witnessed the attendants deliberating on the further measures and steps as suggested in the NITI Aayog member Dr VK Paul's committee's report on the containment strategy for Delhi.

The meeting was attended by Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare Harsh Vardhan and Delhi's Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal along with several other senior officials.

In the meeting, it was determined that a serological survey will be conducted in the entire landscape of Delhi from 27 June to 10 July with as many as 20,000 samples being collected for the survey. This would help comprehensively assess the real spread of COVID-19 in Delhi.

"To adopt a comprehensive policy for Delhi, the government will conduct random serological test of 20 thousand people starting from June 27 to July 10," said a statement from Ministry of Home Affairs.

Dr Vinod Paul committee, which was constituted on June 14, recommended that there should be re-mapping of the containment zones and strict vigil should be adopted along with strict contact tracing and quarantining. In the containment zones there should be detailing outside homes and to run the Covid care center, help of NGO should be taken while each district should be attached with one big hospital, the committee recommended.

To implement these recommendations, the delhi government will act according to a timeline starting from Monday. The delimitation of the containment zones will be done by June 26 and 100 per cent mapping will be done in the zones by June 30, and by July 6 survey of Delhi has to be completed.

The Home Minister has directed to alert the ministry on each death with details of the patient. It also said, patients with no comorbidity can be kept in home isolation.

After the meeting, the Aam Aadmi Party tweeted: "CM @rvindKejriwal and Dy CM @msisodia discussed key strategies with HM Amit Shah on making contact tracing more robust and further strengthening of medical services in severely impacted areas."

The developments come at a time when the total tally of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Delhi has surged past 60,000 mark.

With IANS Inputs