IMPHAL,Dec 26-Manipur is preparing to conduct a state wide Covid-mock drill on December 27 to combat any emergency relating to Covid 29 pandemic.
Confirming this and sharing photographs of the preparation meeting in Imphal in a Facebook post, the office of National Health Mission Manipur today wrote, "Review Meeting on Covid 19 Mock Drill Preparedness for the districts chaired by Additional chief secretary Shru V Mang."
Earlier Manipur Health Minister Dr S Ranjan Singh conveyed this while addressing a press conference few days back after attending state Chief Minister N Biren Singh chaired a review meeting on the report of rising number of Covid 19 cases due to variant BF.7 in some countries.
However daily detected cases are still low in India.In case of Manipur, there is no new Covid 19 active case not to speak of recording any new Covid 19 positive case.
Dr Ranjan said the step is being taken up not to create panic but to initiate precautions in case of any eventuality as the state's vaccination rate is comparatively low particularly in the hill areas.
The state's vaccination rate (1st dose 62.5%,2nd dose 54.9% & booster dose: 2,79,099) is only about 20.86%.
"So it's time to get vaccination apart from Covid appropriate behaviour,minimise or avoid the public gathering, international travel," says Minister Dr Ranjan. "If there are symptoms like flu and fever, one should follow the government guidelines."
Appealing to the public to get complete doses of vaccination and follow Covid appropriate behaviour such as wearing masks, social distancing and hand hygiene, he said, "Necessary preparations are on for Covid management considering the existing infrastructures, medicines etc in case of emergencies."
On the detection of any new Covis 19 positice case, he said,"Any new Covid 19 positive case will be tested for whole Genome sequences."
On Wednesday, Director Dr Kh Sasheekumar Mangang of Directorate of Health Services had issued a memorandum to take up necessary measures so that all newly detected Covid 19 positive cases will be tested for whole Genome sequences through nearest INSACOG network laboratories to enable timely detection of newer variants if any circulating in the state.
It also directed all the Chief Medical Officers,Medical Superintendents and District Covid 19 testing teams were directed to send new RAT Covid 19 positive samples to state Covid referral laboratories(RIMS/JNIMS)for further RT-PCR and for Whole Genome Sequencing.
Currently the state is once again free of the contagion after a gap of seven months on December 21 as the two remaining active cases were discharged on completion of mandatory quarantine period.
After the pandemic set foot in the state on March 24, 2020, the state, for the first time, became free from Covid 19 on May 20 last year.
On Sunday, some samples were tested without yielding any positive results making it the 12th day in a row to have zero new cases.So far, the virus had claimed 2149 lives including seven Central Armed Police Force(CAPF) personnel, and infected 1,39,922 individuals including 5,022 CAPF personnel.