Central Teams Rushed To Odisha, 5 Other States Reporting Increased COVID Cases

New Delhi/Bhubaneswar: The Centre on Friday deputed multi-disciplinary teams to six states, including Odisha, reporting a high number of COVID-19 cases.

According to a PIB release, teams have been sent to Kerala, Arunachal Pradesh, Tripura, Odisha, Chhattisgarh and Manipur to support the states in their efforts for targeted COVID response and management, and effectively tackling the pandemic.

The two-member high-level team to these states consists of a clinician and a public health expert. The teams will monitor the overall implementation of COVID-19 management, especially in testing, including surveillance and containment operations; COVID appropriate behaviour and its enforcement; availability of hospital beds, sufficient logistics including ambulances, ventilators, medical oxygen and COVID-19 vaccination progress. The teams will monitor the situation and also suggest remedial actions, the release said.

The team for Odisha is being led by Dr A Dan, Public Health Specialist AIIH&PH.

Notably, the COVID graph in the state has been witnessing a downward trend and the test positivity rate has remained below 4.5 per cent for the last 3 days. No districts are in the RED zone in TPR while Khurda, Balasore and Cuttack have over 2500 active cases.

However, there have been allegations of underreporting of COVID deaths. The case fatality rate, meanwhile, went up to nearly 1 per cent in June with 1272 deaths against an average of 0.37 per cent in the second wave.