Agra corona cluster plan: For 1 case, over 9.3 lakh people surveyed

By Sumit Saxena

New Delhi, April 11 (SocialNews.XYZ) Agra has emerged as the finest example in best practices in cluster management, where a smart city control room was converted into a war room to fight the outbreak of coronavirus from a person who had returned from Italy on February 25.

A total of 1,248 teams were deployed, which surveyed over 9.3 lakh population by screening 1.65 lakh households.

Lav Agarwal, Joint Secretary Health Ministry, said in the management plan under slogan "Corona Haarega, Agra Jeetega' (coronavirus will lose, Agra will win)", a framework where all the city authorities coordinated, was deployed for a data-driven active contact screening and isolation of coronavirus cases.

In this initiative, the private sector also contributed, and the local authorities maintained the essentials supply chain. Active public-private partnership helped in setting up testing and treatment facilities and isolation centres.

Agra was the first cluster in India where operations were carried out under containment and rapid emergency response.

According to the Health Ministry, Agra had a total of 38 epicentres of the coronavirus impact were identified, and 10 epicentres have been closed so far.

A total of 4,054 quarantine centres were made functional -- 566 paid institutional quarantine centres, 3,060 free institutional quarantine centres and 428 official quarantine centres. Till April 11 in Agra, 5 cases have recovered and 87 are under watch.

Agarwal said, "Contact tracing began after February 25, after the arrival of a positive person from Italy. The authorities tracked his movement in Agra at his residence, at the restaurant he visited and also the factory he had gone to. The district administration identified the epicentre and hotspot and then a cluster containment plan was prepared."

A micro plan was made - within 3km of radius from first and second epicentre -- and the district administration identified the epicentre on the map. The impact of the positive person in the area was prepared and geographical distribution was done on the map.

Agarwal said that special teams delineated the area on the map identifying 3km containment area and 5 km buffer zone from the epicentre and within this urban primary healthcare centres were utilized.

"Micro plan was made and 1248 special teams - consisting ANMs/ASHA/AWW - were deployed for door-to-door survey where 9,30,691 lakh population was screened. As many as 2,500 people were found to be having cough and cold symptoms, samples collected based on the criteria", added Agarwal. According to the Health Ministry, 36 people were found with travel history in the past 28 days. Of these, 3 had medical symptoms.

For this exercise, the Agra Smart City control room was made a war room, where a central helpline was established and multi-disciplinary teams created. The district administration conducted isolation and identified critical hotspots and clusters and carried out active surveys. Containment in the area was managed, where doorstep delivery was ensured.

(Sumit Saxena can be contacted at sumit.s@ians.in)

Source: IANS