PGI report bares chinks in Chandigarh’s Bapu Dham handling

Sandeep Rana

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, May 22

The PGI has submitted a 17-point recommendation to the UT Administration, which shows that there were critical gaps in the containment strategy adopted by the Administration at Bapu Dham Colony, the city’s worst Covid-affected zone.

The report, a copy of which has been accessed by The Tribune, was submitted to UT Administrator VP Singh Badnore this week. A key recommendation was institutional quarantine of all family contacts of positive cases outside the colony. However, despite the fact that around 30 families were most affected and cases after cases were reported from within the families, the Administration failed to shift them to a quarantine centre.

Since these EWS category houses have little space for home-quarantine, the infection transmission was bound to happen. The Administration recently started making the said arrangements, but the cases have already spread like a wildfire.

The report also called for active surveillance of influenza like illness (ILI)/severe acute respiratory infections in the colony as per the national guidelines for Covid-19. According to the report, key activities should be active case search, listing and tracking of contacts, recording temperature with handheld infra-red thermometer to identify patients with fever even without ILI symptoms and recording oxygen saturation with pulse oximeter to identify high-risk individuals for testing.

In the report, the PGI team headed by Prof JS Thakur suggested to set up a real-time epidemiology and health intelligence unit. It was recommended that mapping of vulnerable population (senior citizens and patients with chronic non-communicable diseases) should be undertaken. However, Prof Thakur refused to comment on the report.

UT Health Secretary Arun Gupta said, “We will consider whatever recommendations are there.” The report has nowhere compared Mumbai’s Dharavi’s infection rate with that of Bapu Dham.