New Delhi:
The Centre on Friday deputed multi-disciplinary teams to Kerala, Arunachal Pradesh, Tripura, Odisha, Chhattisgarh and Manipur in view of the high number of COVID-19 cases being reported by these states.
Teams will be supporting the states in their efforts to carry out a targeted Covid response and management, and effectively tackling the pandemic, a Union Health Ministry statement said.
The two-member high level team to these states comprises a clinician and a public health expert, the statement said.
The teams will visit the states immediately and monitor the overall implementation of COVID-19 management, especially in testing, including surveillance and containment operations; Covid Appropriate Behaviour and its enforcement; availability of hospital beds, sufficient logistics including ambulances, ventilators, medical oxygen etc., and COVID-19 vaccination progress.
The teams will monitor the situation and also suggest remedial actions, the statement said.
The Central teams will assess the situation and suggest remedial actions on public health activities to the respective state governments.
The team to Manipur will be led by Dr L Swasticharan, Additional DDG and Director EMR; team to Arunachal Pradesh will be led by Dr Sanjay Sadhukhan, Professor AIIH&PH; for Tripura Dr RN Sinha; for Kerala Dr Ruchi Jain, Public Health Specialist Gr. II, RoHFW; for Odisha Dr. A Dan, Public Health Specialist AIIH&PH and for Chhattisgarh Dr Dibakar Sahu, Assistant Professor, AIIMS Raipur.
As an ongoing effort to strengthen efforts of various state and UT Governments for Covid management, the Central Government has been deputing Central teams from time to time to visit various states and UTs.
These teams interact with the state and UT authorities and get a first-hand understanding of the challenges and issues being faced by them so as to strengthen their ongoing activities and remove bottlenecks, if any, the statement said.
46,617 new coronavirus infections
Meanwhile, India saw a single-day rise of 46,617 new coronavirus infections, taking the tally of COVID-19 cases to 3,04,58,251, while the national recovery rate has crossed 97 per cent, according to the Union Health Ministry data updated on Friday.
The death toll due to COVID-19 rose to 4,00,312 with 853 daily fatalities.
Over 34 crore vaccine doses have been administered under the nationwide vaccination drive so far, it said.
The active cases have further declined to 5,09,637, comprising 1.67 per cent of the total infections, while the national COVID-19 recovery rate has improved to 97.01 per cent, the data updated at 8 am showed.
A net decline of 13,620 cases has been recorded in the total number of active COVID-19 cases in a span of 24 hours.
Also, 18,80,026 tests were conducted on Thursday, taking the total cumulative tests conducted so far for detection of COVID-19 in the country to 41,42,51,520, while the daily positivity rate was recorded at 2.48 per cent. It has been less than five per cent for 25 consecutive days, the ministry said.
Weekly positivity rate has declined to 2.57 per cent, according to the health ministry.
Recoveries continue to outnumber daily new cases for 50th consecutive days.
The number of people who have recuperated from the disease surged to 2,95,48,302, while the case fatality rate stands at 1.31 per cent, the data stated.