COVID-19: Nine lakh people under surveillance across India

As many as 9,45,915 people are under community surveillance through the Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme (IDSP), as per the data revealed by Union Health and Family Welfare Ministry on Friday.

Dr Sujeet Singh, Director, National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), said: "Through our continuous efforts, we have kept over 9 lakh people, who might possibly be infected with coronavirus, on surveillance based on the data collected from 734 districts from across India. The collected data was effectively analysed through epidemiological intelligence."

"Three major steps taken by the Central government have greatly helped in containing the spread of coronavirus. These include blocking of international flights in March so that no infected person can entre India, increase in the testing capacity, and lockdown," Dr Singh told ANI.

"We have created a live dashboard to see real-time surveillance. We used to directly capture from districts all data like logistics, hospitals, and quarantine and isolation beds. Through this surveillance system, we also analysed that in the future if cases increase, then how much logistics, PPE kits, manpower and resources we will need." he added.

Dr Singh said that this surveillance is aimed at creating a coordinated network in different Central ministries.

"As this COVID-19 does not have any drug or vaccine so far, the only vaccine is social distancing and community surveillance. Also, the lockdown has greatly benefited in community surveillance to break the chain of transmission," added Dr Singh.

The State governments have coordinated with the Centre to work through the surveillance system. At the district level, the district surveillance network has played a major role with the help of the District Collector.

"We were able to do surveillance at affected and non- affected districts, house to house search, sample collection, contact tracing and identify the hotspots, cluster containment by States and monitoring response interventions," said Dr Singh. 

-ANI

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