Delhi to continue door to door survey to test symptomatic COVID patients

The survey was earlier conducted between October 20-24, covering over 57 lakh people in containment zones and hotspots to identify symptomatic persons and their contacts and test them. The direction to continue the exercise was given in a meeting of the COVID-19 nodal officer with district magistrates on Wednesday, a senior Delhi government officer said.


PTI | New Delhi | Updated: 26-11-2020 23:33 IST | Created: 26-11-2020 23:33 IST
Delhi to continue door to door survey to test symptomatic COVID patients
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A door to door survey for identifying and testing symptomatic COVID-19 patients will continue in Delhi with focus on those aged above 50 years and having comorbidities, officials said on Thursday. The survey was earlier conducted between October 20-24, covering over 57 lakh people in containment zones and hotspots to identify symptomatic persons and their contacts and test them.

The direction to continue the exercise was given in a meeting of the COVID-19 nodal officer with district magistrates on Wednesday, a senior Delhi government officer said. The district magistrate of the west district in an order issued on November 25 directed officials to continue the door to door exercise.

"During the meeting on November 25, it was directed by the competent authority to continue the process of the house to house search for symptomatic persons and those above 50 with co-morbidities," the order stated. All the SDMs in the district have been directed to ensure the house to house search for symptomatic persons and other categories through teams allocated to them till further orders, it said.

"We have been directed to continue the survey to cover buffer areas adjoining containment zones and vulnerable pockets," a senior officer in the north east district said. "No time period has been given to wrap up this next phase and elderly people especially those over 50 years of age having comorbidities and those above 60 years, and also the contacts of symptomatic persons will be focused," he said.

The extended door to door survey will not have any time period and will be conducted as an ongoing process. It will be random rather than being targeted in terms of numbers and the focus will be vulnerable age groups who have higher chances of getting infected, another officer said. The door to door survey for five days in October to identify and isolate COVID-19 infected persons in containment zones and hotspot pockets of the city reported 1,178 cases with a positivity rate of 6.4 per cent, officials said.

The RTPCR test reports of total 18,336 symptomatic persons and their contacts reported 1,178 cases, they said. About 9,000 three-member teams equipped with oximeters and thermal scanners surveyed people in 4,456 containment zones and surrounding areas across 11 districts.

The survey was part of various steps decided to be taken in Delhi in view of surging COVID-19 cases, in a high-level meeting including Union Home Minister Amit Shah and Delhi Chief Minister Amit Shah on November 15..

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

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