A multipronged strategy that involved setting up of macro containment zones, door-to-door survey and daily monitoring of cases through youth committees helped contain the spread of deadly COVID-19 in the villages of Palwal, a district with predominantly rural population.
With the surge in cases of infection in mid-April in the district, inadequate health infrastructure with just 350 oxygen beds was the biggest challenge for the authorities. “Therefore, the strategy was to contain the spread. We had meetings with the market associations and persuaded them to shut the shops on Sundays to prevent overcrowding and facilitate sanitisation. It worked wonders,” said Deputy Commissioner Naresh Narwal.
Weekly surveys
The rural area was divided into different segments and incident commanders were deputed. Weekly surveys were conducted by the patwaris and village secretaries. Daily monitoring was done through 3,000 youth committees and 15 villages with more than 50 symptomatic cases each were identified and declared as macro containment zones, said a press statement issued by the district authorities.
A door-to-door survey was conducted and serious patients were shifted to hospitals after conducting tests. Also, four dedicated round-the-clock helplines were set up for telecounselling and telemedicine of the patients. “The strategy worked really well and cases began to decline after May 20. More than 900 teams have screened 1,83,166 households in 381 villages in the district so far. The positivity rate of the RAT and RT-PCR test conducted on symptomatic persons is 1.28 and 1.69 respectively,” said Mr. Narwal.
