Centre lauds K'taka's efforts to curtail spread of COVID-19: MoHFW

The Centre on Friday lauded the practices adopted by Karnataka for COVID-19 management involving the use of an IT-based model of comprehensive contact tracing and house-to-house survey.

"The Centre has lauded the best practice from Karnataka for COVID-19 management which includes the comprehensive contact tracing of COVID-19 positive cases and physical/phone-based household survey which has covered more than 1.5 crore households," said the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) in a press release.

The two initiatives taken by the State Government are developed as part of the 'Whole of Government' approach with the involvement of multi-sectoral agencies and supported by technology-based solutions and interventions," added the MoHFW.

The centre said that the Karnataka state government has "effectively trace and track each case thereby successfully containing the spread of the epidemic".

"Karnataka has widened the definition of 'Contact' to include both the high risk as well as low-risk contacts as defined by the Government of India. The number of primary and secondary contacts in Karnataka were meticulously traced and put under strict quarantine," the Union Health Ministry said further.

The ministry further informed that more than 10,000 "well-trained" field staff carry out specific responsibilities for contact tracing as per the SOP designed by the State.

"The State has been able to curtail the spread of infection in the slums of big corporation areas through compulsory institutional quarantine of the contacts residing in slums or similar areas. It has also been made mandatory for all returnees/travelers coming to Karnataka to register on the "Seva Sindhu" portal, which enables the State to follow them for the next few days when they are in home / institutional quarantine." added the Health Ministry.

The ministry informed that Karnataka conducted a physical/phone-based household survey that was carried out during May 2020 and covered 153 lakh households out of a total of 168 lakh total households.

"The data collected through the survey was complemented by the information already available with the Health Department for pregnant mothers and TB/HIV/Dialysis/Cancer patients said the ministry.

( With inputs from ANI )