Teams set up at district-level to check surge in COVID-19 cases

In view of the surge in COVID-19 cases in Kozhikode, District Collector Seeram Sambasiva Rao, in his capacity as Chairman of the District Disaster Management Authority, set up teams to discharge dutie

In view of the surge in COVID-19 cases in Kozhikode, District Collector Seeram Sambasiva Rao, in his capacity as Chairman of the District Disaster Management Authority, set up teams to discharge duties under Section 30 of the Disaster Management Act, 2005. The first team in charge of contact tracing and testing is to ensure that local bodies have sufficient number of staff members to discharge their duties related to COVID-19 management. They need to ensure that the control rooms in local bodies are effectively tracing all contacts and that the same is marked on the Jagratha portal. All traced contacts need to be tested while priority-based testing in areas with high test positivity rate (TPR) and testing of vulnerable sections should be ensured. The second team is to manage containment activities such as identifying areas for containment, critical containment or high TPR, and mark them accordingly on the COVID-19 Jagratha portal. The number of cases every week needs to be considered before releasing the area from containment zone status. They are to identify and propose declarations of local bodies with very high TPR as well as critical local self-government institutions (LSGIs).