Palwal, only dist in state to screen entire population

GURUGRAM: Strapped without modern health facilities, Palwal became the only district in Haryana to screen all its people in rural and urban areas for Covid-19, according to officials.

The district has just over a million people and had reported 10,047 cases and 133 deaths, including three on Sunday. According to covid19india.org data till May 29, the case fatality rate (CFR, number of deaths per 100 cases) of the district was 1.26%, higher than the national average of 1.17% and the state average of 1.07%.

The higher-than-average CFR could be attributed to Palwal, around 54 kilometres from Gurugram, not having large private or public hospitals.

“The district is not equipped with modern ultra-modern facilities. The health infrastructure right now is one government hospital, two sub-divisional level hospitals, three community health centres and nearly 15 private hospitals,” said Palwal deputy commissioner Naresh Narwal. The district had only 350 oxygen beds.

This meant that Palwal had to act early.

The strategy was to contain the spread with a proactive approach of the minimum crowd with maximum utilization of mask and sanitization in April when the second wave hit.

Rural areas were divided into different segments and incident commanders were deputed to have first-hand information. A weekly survey was conducted parallelly through patwaris and village secretaries of villages twice a week—Tuesday and Friday—with details of symptomatic persons under the supervision of concerned sub-divisional magistrates. The youth committees kept a tab on all villages on daily basis.

Narwal said a caseload of 50 was enough to place a village under strict lockdown. “A meeting of associations was convened, and all were persuaded to close the market on Sunday to avoid overcrowding. This worked well and all three cities Palwal, Hathin, and Hodal agreed to the proposal,” he said.