Centre lauds K’taka’s model for COVID-19 management

NEW DELHI: The Centre on Friday lauded Karnataka's COVID-19 management system, which includes comprehensive contact tracing of cases and physical and phone-based household surveys, and asked other states to adopt these best practices to their local context and replicate them for better management of the pandemic. Hailing the efforts of Karnataka, the Union Health Ministry said in a statement that the state has widened the definition of “contact” to include both high and low-risk contacts. The state effectively traced and tracked each case, thereby successfully containing the spread of the epidemic.

The two initiatives taken by the state government are developed as part of the “whole of government” approach with the involvement of multi-sectoral agencies and supported by technology-based solutions and interventions.

With contact tracing a critical component to contain the epidemic and ensure that the health infrastructure does not get overwhelmed, over 10,000 well trained field staff carry out specific responsibilities for contact tracing as per the detailed SOP designed by the state which prescribes step-bystep actions to be performed by each designated person.

The Contact Tracing Mobile App and Web Application are being used to overcome the huge quantum of work, genuine forgetfulness of the positive persons and attempts to hide facts due to various reasons, the ministry said. The state has been able to curtail the spread of infection in the corporation areas through compulsory institutional quarantine of the contacts residing in slums or similar areas. It has also been made mandatory for all travellers coming to Karnataka to register on “Seva Sindhu” portal, which enables the state to follow them for the next few days when they are in the home and institutional quarantine.