Delhi will undertake massive house-to-house screening for coronavirus, DGHS has said issuing a new COVID-19 response plan as per Union Home Ministry guidelines. Delhi is the only state in the world after China's Wuhan to undertake such a massive exercise. The decision was taken after Home Minister Amit Shah chaired series of high-level meetings to resolve the growing COVID-19 crisis in Delhi. The meeting was attended by Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal, L-G Anil Baijal and top doctors from AIIMs among other officials.
In light of the rising number of COVID-19 cases in the national capital, the Delhi govt has decided to revamp the response plan to combat the outbreak. As per Delhi govt's response plan, every house in Delhi will be screened by July 6. Furthermore, every house that is in a containment zone will be screened by June 30. There are 261 containment zones in the national capital as of June 24.
Delhi's coronavirus cases have surged past 66,000 while the death toll has crossed 2,300.
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and Union Home Minister Amit Shah were involved in a series of high profile meetings to discuss the deteriorating COVID-19 situation in Delhi.
All houses in Delhi to be screened by July 6 in new coronavirus response plan
Several other steps have been taken in Delhi to curb the spread of the virus. Some of these steps are
- All symptomatic contacts and asymptomatic high-risk contacts to be tested between 5th and 10th day of contact as per the latest guidelines
- Formation of containment zone around the house and workplace of COVID-19 positive patient within 24 hours.
- Placement of travel movement information of the anonymised COVID-19 patient in the public domain.
- It shall be ensured that Arogya Setu App shall be downloaded by all, specially in containment zones. The possible hotspots shall be worked out which should be brought to the notice of District Collector everyday for further action.
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COVID positive patients or cluster cases in the highly-dense areas will be sent to COVID Care Centres
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Deployment of enough teams for daily case search, testing and isolation.
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Active case search in containment zones and vigorous contact tracing of COVID-19 patients will be undertaken to analyze the reasons for clustering. Also, the containment zones will be redefined in line with the guidelines of NCDC.
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To prevent infection, refresher training and refresher course on infection prevention and control practices for all categories of Health Workers shall be undertaken periodically. The Use of IT platforms for the same will be explored.
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Periodic Health Check-up, prophylactic use of HCQ as per the MoHFW guidelines and screening of COVID-19 will be undertaken.
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To strengthen the process of monitoring of Home isolation and early diagnosis of the contacts, NGO, civil societies and voluntary organisation will be explored.
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To increase the awareness amongst the citizens of Delhi, and to ensure their compliance to the strategies of the Government, IEC activities will be enhanced through Mass Media and interpersonal communication. District teams will work at the local level to increase awareness.
