The Jharkhand health department has directed deputy commissioners of all the districts to implement stricter Covid-19 management and control measures, including RT-PCR tests of all travellers, in view of the recent surge in cases.
The letter by additional chief secretary health, Arun Kumar Singh, informs about the continuous surge in the number of Covid cases in Jharkhand in the last four weeks.
The letter directs the deputy commissioners to conduct door-to-door search and test all severe acute respiratory infections cases, especially vulnerable people and those with co-morbidities, ensure the right proportion of RT-PCR tests and organise mass testing drives in areas with high positivity rates.
“All residual daily cases or any new emerging clusters are to be completely traced and treated to suppress any large outbreak. All Covid-19 positive patients should be brought to the respective government hospitals and thoroughly questioned over travel history, their movement, for the purpose of finding all possible contacts for effective contact tracing,” the letter directs.
The letter also asks for testing of all contacts of positive cases within 24 hours along with constant monitoring of international passengers and persons coming from omicron-affected states of India. The data on contact tracing along with travel history have to be mailed on a daily basis at idspjharkhand3@gmail.com.
“The samples of positive cases from all travellers, including samples of the community found positive in RT-PCR test, are to be promptly sent for genome sequencing to the Institute of Life Sciences Bhubaneswar,” the letter states.
It advises the district administrations to allow home isolation only on case-to-case basis after fully satisfying the justification of such permission and strict monitoring of such cases through call centres.
The Union health ministry had on Wednesday written to eight states and Union Territories, including Jharkhand, to enhance testing, strengthen hospital preparedness, increase the pace and coverage of Covid-19 vaccination drive and ensure strict enforcement of restrictions to counter the spread of the infection.
The other states include Delhi, Haryana, Tamil Nadu, Bengal, Maharashtra, Gujarat and Karnataka.
Jharkhand recorded 344 new Covid cases on Wednesday, one of the largest single-day spikes in recent months, triggering fears of yet another wave of infections.
The last time Jharkhand registered a 300-plus single-day rise in Covid cases was in early May this year amid the peak of the second wave. Of the 344 cases reported on Wednesday, Ranchi accounted for 118 cases, followed by Koderma with 56 cases, East Singhbhum with 43, Dhanbad with 31.
Even though the state hasn’t reported an omicron infection yet, health department officials suspect that the variant of concern may have already entered Jharkhand, given the speed of fresh infections in the last couple of weeks.
The state’s count of active cases is 992 at present.
