Central Team Arrives In Odisha To Review COVID-19 Situation

Bhubaneswar: A two-member Central team arrived in Bhubaneswar on Monday to review the COVID-19 situation in Odisha.

The team is led by Public Health Specialist at All India Institute of Hygiene & Public Health (AIIH & PH) in Kolkata. The other member is Professor in the Department of Public Health Administration at AIIH & PH Dr Shibani Dutta.

“We will visit the districts with high number of cases on Tuesday,” Dutta told media persons after landing at Biju Patnaik International Airport.

“We will see whether the positive cases in these districts are traced and whether the testing of the earlier cases is still continuing. We will also review the contact tracing and surveillance activities, treatment facilities for COVID patients in the hospitals along with availability of beds and ventilators,” she added.

The team is scheduled to meet senior health officials in Odisha on Monday to assess the situation. “In the meeting today (Monday), we will decide the districts to be visited and prepare our schedule accordingly,” Dutta said.

Director Medical Education and Training (DMET) CBK Mohanty said Central teams visiting states is a routine process to review situations arising out of natural calamities and epidemics and advise state governments accordingly.

Asked if the Odisha government will place any demands, Mohanty said there is no such scope. “This is a technical team. If the team seeks any help during its visit, the government will help it. If they do not seek any help and want to visit places independently, there is no problem,” he replied.

The Centre had recently informed that multi-disciplinary teams will be deputed to Odisha, Kerala, Arunachal Pradesh, Tripura, Chhattisgarh and Manipur in view of increased number of COVID cases being reported in these states.