NEW DELHI, May 16 - With coronavirus cases continuing to rise, top health ministry officials on Saturday held a meeting with senior officers and district magistrates from 30 municipal areas which are contributing almost 80 per cent of the country�s COVID-19 cases during which monitoring of old city areas, urban slums, migrant labourer camps and other high density pockets was emphasised.
Timely tracing of patients to improve recovery percentage and influenza like illness (ILI)/severe acute respiratory infections (SARI) surveillance was also stressed during the meeting.
Health Secretary Preeti Sudan and Rajesh Bhushan, OSD, health ministry, along with other senior officers held the high-level review meeting with the Principal Health Secretaries, Municipal Commissioners, DMs and other officials from the 30 municipal areas.
These 30 municipal areas are from the States of Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Punjab and Odisha.
The measures taken by the officials and the staff of the municipal corporations for the management of COVID-19 cases were reviewed during the meeting which was also informed that fresh guidelines on management of COVID-19 in urban settlements are being shared, a health ministry statement said.
A total of 30,150 people have been cured till now across the country and in the last 24 hours, 2,233 patients have recovered � the highest number of recoveries in a day. This takes the total recovery rate to 35.09 per cent, the health ministry said.
The total number of confirmed cases stands at 85,940, registering an increase of 3,970 in the last 24 hours.
During the meeting, a presentation was made on the present status of COVID-19 infections in the districts while highlighting the high risk factors, indices such as confirmation rate, fatality rate, doubling rate, tests per million, etc.
The municipal officials were briefed about the factors to be considered while mapping the containment and buffer zones, the activities mandated in containment zone, active search for cases through house-to-house surveillance, contact tracing, testing protocol, clinical management of active cases, surveillance activities in buffer zone, etc. � PTI
