New Delhi: The Central government has set up 50 high level multi-disciplinary public health teams and deployed them to 50 districts across Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh and Punjab in view of the recent very large numbers of daily new Covid-19 cases and daily mortality being consistently reported by these states.
The teams, comprising a clinician, epidemiologist and a public health expert, are being rushed to 30 districts of Maharashtra, 11 districts of Chhattisgarh and 9 districts of Punjab to assist the state Health Departments and local authorities in Covid-19 surveillance, control and containment measures.
The teams will 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 vaccination progress.
Three senior Central government officers have been appointed as nodal officers for the three states - Vijoy Kumar Singh of Ministry of Textiles for Punjab, Richa Sharma, Additional Secretary, Environment, Forest and Climate Change for Chhattisgarh, and Kunak Kumar, Joint Secretary, Housing and Urban affairs, for Maharashtra.
The high-level teams will report to and coordinate with the nodal officers for the three states. They will submit daily reports on five aspects including testing, contact tracing including surveillance and containment, hospital infrastructure including ICU, ventilators and oxygen beds, enforcement of Covid appropriate behaviour, and Covid vaccination.
As an ongoing effort to strengthen efforts of various State ad 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/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.
India recorded 1,03,558 new coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours, highest single day spike for the first time, taking the total tally to 1,25,89,067 on Monday.
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