By Our Correspondent
BHUBANESWAR: A review meeting on COVID-19 management was held on Friday under the chairmanship of Commissioner-cum-Secretary in the Health and Family Welfare Department Salin Pandit at conference Hall of Loka Seva Bhavan .
All district headquarter hospitals including Capital Hospital, BBSR, RGH, Rourkela 86 MC 86Hs have to undertake mock drill uniformly across the State on 27.12.2022, to ensure operational readiness for management of COVID with specific focus on oxygen plants, ventilators, to and human resources. The form to update the status of Mock Drill (will be available by 24th Decemer, 2022 on Covid India Portal) will be duly filled up g b facility wise and to be uploaded positively on or before 27th evening by DPHO or
any designated officer.
Initiating the discussion, the Commissioner cum Secretary welcomed all and briefed about the objective of the meeting for management of COVID-19 keeping in view the rising trend in some countries and requested DPH,Odisha to give a presentation. DPH, Odisha gave a detailed presentation on present global Covid scenario and situation in India as well as Odisha. As per the views of the experts present in the meeting the current COVID situation can be interpreted as below:
Countries like Japan, Republic of Korea, USA, France, Brazil, Germany and China are showing rise of cases in last two weeks.However, the situation in our state has remained stable with below fifteen cases per day since November, 2022 and on most of the days it is below 10 cases.
Hospitalization at present in the state is nil with active case load of 54 as on date.All experts are of the opinion that the current variants circulating since last few months in India are all sub variants of Omicron and have not led to any rise in cases or hospitalisation.
They are also of the opinion that the new Omicron variants though associated with high transmissibility, but there is no evidence to suggest that it can cause disease severity or escape vaccine induced community in our country.
After detailed discussion the following decisions were taken:
Surveillance &Testing: The present testing level of 134 test per million is much higher than the country level of 109 per million. Also Odisha is testing 1552 samples to get one positive against India figure of 589 tests for one positive. In the above scenario the current testing and surveillance strategy for the state has to continue as per the ICMR guideline. Surveillance at Airport and Sea Port: The surveillance at Airports and Sea ports are to be guided by the advisory/ guidelines issued by the Gal from time to time. The state IDSP team to keep in close liaison with the Airport Authority and Ministry of Civil Aviation in this regard.
Whole Genome Sequencing(WGS): At present ILS,BBSR and RMRC, BBSR are conducting Whole Genome Sequencing for the COVID positive cases as a part of INSACOG consortium. In the meantime a WGS facility has been set up in the Deptt. of Bio Chemistry of SCB MCH Cuttack. It was decided that SCB MCH will apply to INSACOG for affiliation of their WGS laboratory with INSACOG.
