Union Health Ministry on Saturday said that the Centre will send multi-disciplinary teams to 10 states which are reporting an increasing number of Omicron and COVID-19 cases or slow vaccination pace, reported news agency ANI.
"A decision has been taken to deploy multi-disciplinary central teams to 10 identified states, some of which are either reporting an increasing number of Omicron and COVID-19 cases or slow vaccination pace," the Union Health Ministry said in an official statement, reported ANI.
The Centre will deploy teams in Kerala, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Mizoram, Karnataka, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, and Punjab.
These teams will be stationed in the states for three to five days and will work along with the State Health Authorities.
As per the Ministry, these teams will specifically look at areas of contact tracing, including surveillance, containment operations, and COVID-19 testing including sending of adequate samples from clusters to the INSACOG network for genome sequencing.
The teams will also be responsible for the enforcement of COVID Appropriate Behaviors, availability of hospital beds, sufficient logistics including ambulances, ventilators, medical oxygen etc, and COVID-19 vaccination progress in the states.
"The State level central teams will assess the situation, suggest remedial actions and submit a report every evening by 7 PM on the public health activities being undertaken to both the Central and state government," the statement further read, reported ANI.
A total of 415 cases of Omicron variant of coronavirus have been detected in India so far, out of which 115 have recovered or migrated, according to the Union Health Ministry's data updated on Saturday.
Maharashtra has recorded a maximum of 108 Omicron cases, followed by Delhi at 79, Gujarat 43, Telangana 38, Kerala 37, Tamil Nadu 34 and Karnataka 31.
India's Covid tally rose to 3,47,79,815 with 7,189 fresh cases in the last 24 hours, while the active cases have declined to 77,032, according to the data updated at 8 am. The death toll climbed to 4,79,520 with 387 more fatalities, the data showed.
(With inputs from PTI)
