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Efficient surveillance key to check COVID pandemic: TIGS director
The Hindu
Testing those with COVID symptoms and random testing should be stepped up: Rakesh Mishra
Efficient surveillance that includes more testing and sewage surveillance is the key to control the current COVID situation. Testing those with obvious COVID symptoms and random testing in offices, educational institutions and gatherings should be stepped up for quickly identifying COVID positive patients and isolating them to arrest the virus spread, said Tata Institute for Genetics & Society (TIGS) director and scientist Rakesh Mishra.
Governments should also invest in sewage surveillance, which is pretty effective, unbiased and inexpensive, and can give an early indication of any surge in cases 5-6 days in advance for the authorities concerned to act and take precautionary measures, he said on Friday.
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When fed into Latin, pusilla comes out denoting “very small”. The Baillon’s crake can be missed in the field, when it is at a distance, as the magnification of the human eye is woefully short of what it takes to pick up this tiny creature. The other factor is the Baillon’s crake’s predisposition to present less of itself: it moves about furtively and slides into the reeds at the slightest suspicion of being noticed. But if you are keen on observing the Baillon’s crake or the ruddy breasted crake in the field, in Chennai, this would be the best time to put in efforts towards that end. These birds live amidst reeds, the bulrushes, which are likely to lose their density now as they would shrivel and go brown, leaving wide gaps, thereby reducing the cover for these tiddly birds to stay inscrutable.