House-to-house surveillance drive misses out many in state

THE DEPARTMENT CLAIMS TO HAVE SCREENED AS MANY AS 1.16 CRORE RESIDENTS

AMRITSAR The Punjab health and family welfare department’s house-to-house surveillance to medically screen all the residents aged above 30 for Covid-19 has missed out many people across the state even as then project was declared as having been completed.

The department claims to have screened as many as 1.16 crore such residents, nearly 40% of a total population of 2.98 crore. Of the 9,750 people who exhibited coronavirus-related symptoms, 262 were found infected, with a positivity rate of 2.6%, officials said.

But when HT spoke to several residents aged above 30 in Amritsar, Mohali, Jalandhar, Faridkot, Pathankot and Ludhiana besides other districts, they said they were never contacted or surveyed by the health teams.

Accredited social health activists (ASHAs) and doctors conducted the door-to-door campaign launched in June. The government had also launched a mobile app, ‘Ghar Ghar Nigrani’, to store the data, including co-morbidities among the screened people.

“It took nearly two months to complete the survey with a focus on virus hotspot districts. During the campaign, we detected 262 persons in early stages of infection and most of them recovered,” said state covid-19 nodal officer Dr Rajesh Bhaskar.

He added, “As many as 2,432 people were found suffering from fever, 1,050 had sore throat, 5,017 had cough, 937 suffered from diarrhoea, 932 had influenza-like illnesses while 225 were found to have severe acute respiratory illnesses.”

“Also, around 4 lakh people suffered from hypertension, 2.36 lakh from diabetes and 6,823 from other chronic diseases like heart and kidney ailments, tuberculosis and cancer. Most Covid-19 patients in the state who died had co-morbidities,” said Dr Bhaskar.

Kulwant Singh, a resident of New Partap Nagar, Amritsar, said, “No health team contacted our family or friends. Also, I have not seen any health teams visiting our locality in the city’s populated area.”

Gurpreet Singh, a resident of Barnala, said, “I stay in the district headquarters but no health team visited our house to screen me or my family. How can the project be complete without surveying each and every resident?”