Centre plans to send high-level teams to states, UTs reporting rise in COVID-19 case

New Delhi,Nov 20: The Central government is planning to send high-level teams to other states, along with Haryana, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Manipur to monitor the fight against coronavirus.

In a statement issued on Friday, the Health Ministry said the Centre is also contemplating sending such teams to other states and UTs that are witnessing a surge in COVID-19 positive cases.

"The Union government has advised the State/UT governments to adopt aggressive and widespread testing to ensure that the missed out and undetected positive COVID-19 cases are promptly identified for timely and effective tracing, containment and subsequent treatment," it said.

The move comes on a day India's coronavirus caseload passed 90 lakh or nine million. Delhi, Kerala, Maharashtra, West Bengal and Rajasthan are the five states that reported the highest number of cases in the last 24 hours.

The total coronavirus cases mounted to 90,04,365 and the death toll climbed to 1,32,162 with the novel coronavirus virus claiming 584 lives in a span of 24 hours in the country.

The COVID-19 case fatality rate has further declined to 1.46 per cent.There are 4,43,794 active cases of coronavirus infection in the country which comprises 4.92 per cent of the total caseload.

On Thursday, the Centre has rushed high-level teams to Haryana, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Manipur where they will visit districts reporting high number of COVID-19 cases and support the state's efforts towards strengthening containment, surveillance, testing and efficient clinical management of positive cases.

With the spike in daily new COVID-19 cases and fatalities in Delhi, the spillover effect is being observed in the NCR regions within Haryana and Rajasthan where the number of COVID positive patients is on the rise.

Dr Randeep Guleria, Director, AIIMS, New Delhi is leading the three-member team to Haryana and Dr V K Paul, Member (Health), Niti Aayog is heading the Rajasthan team.

The Health ministry said Dr S K Singh, Director (NCDC) will be leading the team to Gujarat while Dr L Swasticharan, Additional DDG, DHGS is heading the Manipur team.

The teams will visit the districts reporting high number of COVID cases and support the state's efforts towards strengthening containment, surveillance, testing, infection prevention and control measures, and efficient clinical management of positive cases.

The central teams will also guide in effectively managing the challenges related to timely diagnosis and follow up.