‘City Preparedness Plan’ to Curtail Spread of COVID-19 in Urban Slums: Balbir Singh Sidhu

Chandigarh : With view to ramp up the efforts to curtail the spread of corona virus in urban slums of 5 districts where maximum cases of Corona virus have been reported, the Punjab Government has chalked out a ‘City Preparedness Plan’.Disclosing this here today, Mr. Balbir Singh Sidhu said that more than 54 percent of COVID-19 cases reported from District Amritsar, Ludhiana Jalandhar, SAS Nagar and Patiala so that to take quick action to control virus in specific area, a sub-committee of District Disaster Management Committee has now included the Community Medicine Faculty from Medical College, WHO, NPSP staff and a prominent NGO. He said that this dedicated committee would assist the City Administration for preparation of epidemic preparedness plans, implementation, monitoring and reporting in consultation with the help of Health Department.“After getting the significant inputs from these committees, a State level committee comprising of Director, Health Services, Executive Director, SHSRC and State Epidemiologist would further be taken the decision regarding sample collection, testing & reporting with a view to reduce turnaround time to less than 24 hrs (from collection of sample to report receipt by patient)”, he added.To ensure the ‘City Preparedness Plan’ in urban slums of cities, the Minister further explained that the house to house surveillance campaign and testing process would also be daily reviewed especially conducted in containment and Micro containment zones. Frontline workers and volunteers to be deputed to motivate people with very mild symptoms of COVID such as headache, body ache, sore throat, fever etc for consulting doctors at flu-corners and for providing earlier treatment in such areas.Mr. Sidhu said that more than 2,15,000 samples have taken so far and to enhance the capacity of sample collection, special training have been imparted to the CHOs, RMOs and other technical staff those are competent to collect the samples.Additional Flu-corners have been established in all health institutions including health wellness centers including sub-centers in urban slums where all the details of symptomatic persons have been forwarded to the State for further action and preparedness