‘Several factors distinguish the handling of the pandemic in the state but I aim to discuss a few in this article. Of the many innovative steps taken there are three clear winners.
‘First is the setting up of Team 11 — a group of 11 senior government officials tasked with managing different aspects like surveillance and contact tracing, testing and treatment, sanitisation, containment, enforcement, doorstep delivery, issues of migrants, communication strategy, etc — in March itself...
‘The second winner is the Integrated Covid Command and Control Centre (ICCC) set up in every district. This is the nerve centre of pandemic management in the district, sending testing teams to different areas as per plan, ensuring surveillance and contact tracing, sending positive patients to different Covid hospitals or placing them under home isolation...
‘The third winner is the integrated data management portal (upcovid19tracks.in). It provides us with the ability to crunch and analyse data on a daily basis...
‘Let me also discuss two strategic interventions, out of many, which we have taken.
‘The first is the widespread use of the drug, ivermectin, not just for treatment of cases but also as a prophylactic. The state government provides free medicines to all patients in home isolation or in government COVID-19 facilities, which have more than 1.5 lakh beds. We have used the combination of ivermectin and doxycyclin to successfully treat over three lakh home-isolated patients with mild symptoms so far. This combination has also been used by the hospitals across the state for admitted COVID-19 patients. But what is more interesting is the state’s successful use of ivermectin as a prophylactic.
‘The second strategic intervention is the targeted testing of selected groups. We started doing this in June with residents of urban slums, workers at nursing homes, pharmacy shops, bus and auto drivers, shopkeepers, security guards in malls, hospitals, etc.’
Read here (Indian Express, Dec 17, 2021)
