As part of Centre-State coordinated strategy for effective containment and management of the COVID-19 pandemic, a high-level virtual review meeting was chaired by Cabinet Secretary with the Chief Secretaries and Health Secretaries of the nine States that are driving the present spurt of the active caseload in the country. The nine states that participated in the VC include Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Telangana, Odisha, West Bengal, Assam, Karnataka, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh.

A graded, proactive, progressive and well-coordinated strategy of COVID-19 management between the centre and States/UTs has resulted in ever-increasing Recoveries in the country, with progressively falling Case Fatality Rate. There are, however, some States which have in the recent past shown a high rise in the daily number of active cases and are emerging as concern areas from COVID management point of view.

Cabinet Secretary had a detailed review on the State-specific COVID response strategy with the Health Secretaries and other State officials as well as on the factors that were leading to rising case-load in these States in recent times. In keeping with the “Test Track Treat’ strategy, the States were advised to ramp up the testing with a special focus on containment zones. Areas of concern with respect to low testing in certain states was highlighted. It was reiterated that sustained and aggressive testing is crucial for early identification of cases and to prevent the spread of infection.

Cabinet Secretary stressed the need for prompt and proper delineation of containment zones as per the guidelines of Ministry of Health and Family Welfare; intensive contact tracing and house-to-house active case search within the Containment Zones so as to effectively break the chain of transmission. Buffer Zones to be identified outside the Containment Zones and continued surveillance of SARI/ILI cases need to be undertaken.