Citing the resurgence of coronavirus cases in southeast Asia and parts of Europe, the state health department has directed all the corporations, district health officers to monitor influenza-like illness and severe acute respiratory infections (SARI) so that no early warning signals are missed and Covid is controlled. Health officials said as part of intensified surveillance, patients being hospitalized with ILI and SARI will again be tested for COVID-19 and positive samples will be sent for genome sequencing.
Suresh Kakani, Additional Municipal Corporation said though there has been a drop in the daily Covid and active cases over the last two months they are not letting any hospital authorities to show any laxity behaviour against Covid-19, following which they have directed all the deans, medical superintendent and health staff to continue following Covid protocols and closely monitor each patient if they show corona-like symptoms and conduct RT-PCR immediately.
“We have instructed all the hospitals and dispensaries to look after Influenza-like illness (ILI) and Severe Acute Respiratory illness (SARI) patients and also to conduct RT-PCR tests on them. We do not want to leave any loophole which will have a bad impact on the city considering there is a surge in cases in other countries. Moreover, we urged citizens to get vaccinated and not let their guard down for the next six months,” he said.
Additional chief secretary Dr Pradeep Vyas has asked districts to take measures to avoid crowding, stress upon appropriate masking, pro-actively identify clusters and step up surveillance of severe acute respiratory infection (SARI) and Influenza-like illnesses (ILI). In the letter issued last week, he also asked districts to push up vaccination coverage as Maharashtra was much behind the national average
Senior health official from the state health department said all the district collectors and health officers have been instructed to watch for ILI and SARI patients in their respective districts. Moreover, they have come across many patients exhibiting these symptoms and most of them are testing positive for influenza A. However last year there were hardly any cases of swine flu or influenza.
“In the past one month, seven to eight patients have shown symptoms of fever, cough and sore throat, similar to Covid-19. If I test 10 people with these symptoms, the majority are turning positive for influenza. Moreover the current situation may dramatically change over the next few weeks considering there has been a drop in new Covid cases over the past few weeks and are now steadily rising in several parts of the world. We need to be alert at this point of time,,” the doctor said.
