Union Health Secretary held a video conference (VC) today to review the COVID management strategies and actions taken in the eight North Eastern States. The VC was attended by the Principal Secretaries, Health Secretaries and other State representatives from Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Mizoram, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Tripura and Sikkim. These 8 North Eastern States together account for less than 5% of the total active cases in the country.

With active cases numbering 29,690 (as on date), Assam is presently constituting 68% share in the total active caseload of these eight North Eastern States. Tripura has 7,383 active cases and occupies the second place with 17% of the total active caseload of these States.

A snapshot of the total confirmed cases and the active caseload in these States is tabulated below:

The Union Secretary highlighted the need of continued enforcement of containment measures, increase in testing, and effective case management of patients in the hospitals. The Secretaries and representatives from the States shared an in-depth analysis on the current status of COVID-19 in these 8 States, covering aspects of containment measures, contact tracing, surveillance activities, facility-wise case fatality rates, trends in terms of weekly new cases and deaths, etc. They also shared their detailed roadmaps and action plans for the next one month.

Granularities in terms of split of RT-PCR and Rapid Antigen tests conducted in the State, re-testing percentages of symptomatic negatives from Antigen tests, testing lab utilization, hospitalization status and bed occupancies of oxygen-supported beds, ICU beds and ventilator etc., were also presented at the review meeting.

The States were advised to take steps on the following specific areas:

1. Limiting the spread of the infection by implementing stringent containment measures and following social distancing measures, strict peri-meter control, and active house-to-house case search.
2. Early identification by ramping up testing across the states and districts, judicious and full utilization of RT-PCR testing capacity.
3. Effective monitoring of home isolation cases and early hospitalization in case of disease progression.
4. Seamless hospitalization and early admission for patients requiring medical support, especially in cases of co-morbid and elderly population.
5. Keeping the mortality rate to 1% or less.

The Secretaries and other functionaries were urged to continue their efforts to manage the pandemic with the same rigor.

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MV