India’s most populous state UP going the last mile to stop COVID-19: WHO

Tribune News Service
New Delhi, May 11

The World Health Organisation on Tuesday quoted the Uttar Pradesh model of door-to-door Covid surveillance on its website and Twitter pages saying India’s most populous state was going the last mile to stop COVID.

“The Uttar Pradesh state government has initiated house-to-house active case finding of COVID-19 in rural areas to contain transmission by testing people with symptoms for rapid isolation, disease management and contact tracing,” said WHO which is helping the state with containment.

The WHO said UP Government teams moved across 97,941 villages in 75 districts over five days for this activity, which began on May 5 in India’s most populous state with a population of 230 million.

Each monitoring team had two members, who visited homes in villages and remote hamlets to test everyone with symptoms of COVID-19 using Rapid Antigen Tests (RAT) kits.

Those who tested positive were quickly isolated and given a medicine kit with advice on disease management.

All the contacts of those who tested positive were quarantined and tested using an RT-PCR at home by a rapid response team.

Two mobile vans have been allocated to each Block within a District in the state to test people with symptoms, even as routine sample collection and testing continues in Community Health Centres.

“The state government has deployed 141,610 teams and 21,242 supervisors from the state health department for this activity to ensure all rural areas are covered. WHO, which supported Uttar Pradesh government in training and micro planning for the activity, now has field officers on the ground to monitor and share real-time feedback with the government for immediate corrective action to ensure quality,” the WHO said.

WHO field officers have monitored over 2,000 government teams and visited at least 10,000 households.

WHO said it will also support the Uttar Pradesh government on the compilation of the final reports.

“Those with symptoms are tested and given medicine kits and information on quarantining and isolation, both at home and in hospitals. People without signs of COVID-19 are urged to get vaccinated and follow COVID-appropriate behaviours to prevent transmission in rural areas of India’s most populated state.

Micro planning, house visits, concurrent monitoring and follow-ups were core to India’s polio eradication strategy to ensure no one misses access to vaccination and health care services,” the world body said.