Bhubaneswar Civic Body Releases SOP For Contract Tracing Of COVID-19 Cases; Details Here

Bhubaneswar: The Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) on Monday issued a standard operating procedure (SOP) for contact tracing and follow-up actions.

According to the notification, positive cases are categorised into three broad categories and their sub-categories as below.
• Returnees
o Under Home Quarantine
o Under Paid/Institutional Quarantine
• Local Contacts
o Slum Area Cases
o Non-Slum Area Cases
• Hospital Patient Cases

Returnees
All the Returnees from outside state/countries have been registered and are under quarantine either in home or institutional/paid quarantine. Once any case from home quarantine is detected. The contact tracing will broadly cover the following:

• After local inquiry if it is found that the family is in strict home quarantine, then only the family members will be covered under primary contact. In case of suspicion of strict home quarantine protocol, the family, as well as their secondary contacts, will be included for contact tracing. Some of the immediate neighbours and the nearby shops who are in contact with them will also be taken as contacts. Their houses will be put under home quarantine with active surveillance and in case of
symptoms appearing. samples will be collected for testing. The house and its adjacent areas will be sanitized.

Positive cases from institutional/paid quarantine
• The contacts will cover the mode of travel like in case of a private vehicle/hired vehicle the drivers/co-passengers, who will be identified and quarantined.
• The support staff of the institutional quarantine facility/hotels who could have come in contact will be included for contact tracing and all symptomatic contacts will be tested.
• The quarantine centres/hotels need to be properly sanitized.

Local Contacts
Local contacts can be from non-slum areas or slum areas.

For non-slum category positive cases, the contact tracing will cover all primary contacts like family members/close relatives, secondary contacts like places visited frequently and contacts of other family members. Besides, travel and people who were in contact with them since the last 7-10 days will be monitored. The nearby households. shops/vendors will be put on quarantine and subjected to active surveillance for a minimum of 7 days. The ZDCs will keep all the quarantined homes identified for the positive case under strict vigilance with the help of local police and ensure that the inhabitants are adhering to the home quarantine guidelines.

For local contacts belong to slum areas the contact tracing should be more exhaustive and aggressive, the notification said.

The RRT teams will visit the area to identify a cluster to be created for putting all the families to home quarantine. The cluster should be created with adequate coverage of houses for quarantine. Active Surveillance will continue in the slum area for 7 to 14 days. The sanitation activities will be undertaken regularly in the slum area. The Ward Level COVID Sachetak committee will be
activated for intensive awareness in the slum area.

Hospital Patient Cases
Several cases are coming up when patients admitted to government and private hospitals are being tested positive for COVID.

In such cases the contact tracing will be done as follows:
• The treating doctors/nurses/paramedics/attendants will be put to quarantine immediately. Their testing will be done after 5 to 7 days of the contact and after the release of the report, they will be allowed to work as usual. However in case anyone of the above develops some symptoms then testing will be done immediately.
• The primary and secondary contacts of the patients will be included in contact tracing and home quarantined. In case any of the primary/secondary contacts develop symptoms then they can be tested for COVID.
• Other patients who have come in contact with the doctors/nurses should be treated as secondary contacts and appropriate testing protocol will be applicable for them.