The Central government on Saturday rushed high-level multi-disciplinary public health teams to Maharashtra and Punjab in view of the surge in the number of new Covid-19 cases being consistently reported by these states.
They are being deployed to assist the state health departments in Covid-19 surveillance, control and containment measures.
The high-level team to Maharashtra will be led by P. Ravindran, Senior Chief Medical Officer of Health Ministry’s Disaster Management Cell, said a Health Ministry statement.
The public health team to Punjab will be led by S.K. Singh, Director, National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), New Delhi.
The teams will ascertain reasons for the surge of the pandemic which so far has infected 1,11,92,088 people that included 18,327 new coronavirus cases registered in the last 24 hours.
The teams will also brief the Chief Secretaries or Secretaries (Health) of the states concerned on their observations and remedial measures to be undertaken by the state health authorities.
The high-level teams were rushed at a time when Maharashtra, Kerala, Punjab, Karnataka, and Tamil Nadu have reported a high number of Covid daily new cases. They cumulatively account for 82 percent of the new cases reported in the past 24 hours.
Maharashtra has reported the highest daily new cases at 10,216. It is followed by Kerala with 2,776 while Punjab reported 808 new cases. India’s total active caseload has reached 1,80,304 on Saturday.
Currently, the total active cases in Maharashtra are noted at 90,055, including 3,696 new cases registered in the last 24 hours. The cumulative Covid infected figure in the state is 20,55,951. However, a total of 6,661 active cases are registered in Punjab, including 397 new infections compared to the previous day. A total of 1,73,630 people have so far been infected with the disease in the state.
The Central government has been leading the fight against the Covid pandemic with a ‘Whole of Government’ and ‘Whole of Society’ approach under the umbrella strategy of ‘Cooperative Federalism’, the statement said.
As an ongoing effort to strengthen the efforts of various state or UT governments for Covid management, the government has been deputing Central teams from time to time to visit various states and UTs.
“These teams interact with the state or UT authorities and get a firsthand understanding of the challenges and issues being faced by them so as to strengthen their ongoing activities and remove bottlenecks if any,” said the statement.
“The reports of Central teams are shared with the states for further follow up action. The follow-up and compliance on part of states are monitored by the Union Ministry of Health.”
