Ministry of Health & Family Welfare has deployed high level multi-disciplinary Central teams to 15 States/UTs with more than 50 districts/municipal bodies that are witnessing high case load and high spurt of cases to assist the State Governments by providing technical support for containment and facilitate management of COVID-19 outbreak. These States/UTs are: Maharashtra (7 districts/municipalities), Telangana (4), Tamil Nadu (7), Rajasthan (5), Assam (6), Haryana (4), Gujarat (3), Karnataka (4), Uttarakhand (3), Madhya Pradesh (5), West Bengal (3), Delhi (3), Bihar (4), Uttar Pradesh (4), and Odisha (5).
The three-member teams are composed of two public health experts/epidemiologists/clinicians and a senior Joint Secretary level nodal officer for administrative handholding and improving governance. These teams are working in the field and visiting health care facilities to support the State health department in implementation of containment measures and efficient treatment/clinical management of cases within the districts/cities.
In order to ensure better coordination, quick action on the ground, adoption of a more granular strategy, it is proposed that these districts/municipalities should regularly remain in touch with central teams which are already coordinating with the States. Such frequent interaction would further strengthen the surveillance, containment, testing and treatment related action on the ground.
The central teams are assisting the States/UTs in addressing some of the challenges faced by the State/UT authorities such testing bottlenecks, low tests/per million population,, high confirmation rates, high testing confirmation rate, risk of capacity shortfall over the next two months, potential bed shortage, growing Case Fatality Rate, high doubling rate, sudden spike in active cases, etc.
Many districts/municipalities have already formalised a dedicated Core Team at the district level comprising of district level medical and administrative officials to coordinate over regular basis with the Central Team.