SAMPLES FROM 25K VILLAGES TO BE COLLECTED

Assam on Monday launched an ambitious mega drive to collect samples from people with fever, influenza and respiratory problems in 25,000 villages of the state to prevent the community level spread of the coronavirus.

Assam health minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said, “The state has designed the strategy in close coordination with its health workers at grassroots level. Teams of doctors and health workers will go from village to village, the local health worker will organise the villagers for the tests. We intend to reach

25,000 villages and with each passing day, we will ramp up testing.”

The drive started with a spike in cases in the state, in which it was found that some people without any travel history or such contacts, have tested positive for the disease.

From Monday, the ambitious drive will be carried out simultaneously in 29 out of Assam’s

33 districts. The programme envisages plans to find unreported cases of SARI (Severe Acute Respiratory Infections) and ILI (Influenza-Like Illness) from every village of Assam and will further treat the symptomatic minor flu cases at their homes.