Considerably high number of COVID-19 cases in Karimnagar has made the Telangana government to send a team of State Health department officials to district on Thursday to plan measures for containing spread of coronavirus and seasonal diseases. The officials and the district administration held series of meetings with health staff, and medical officers from Primary Health Centres (PHC), conducted field visits.
From the past several days, the daily new infections in the district have been second only to Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) — which is an urban locality. In fact, the daily case load in Karimnagar was highest of all the 33 districts on two days at least: on July 26 and August 2. The new infections in the districts ranged from 60 to 75 in a day in the past one week.
Risk factors
The district is at risk as political activity has picked up in Huzurabad Assembly constituency, located in the district, after former Health Minister Eatala Rajender has quit as its MLA. Leaders from all political parties have held political events and meetings where people were seen not maintaining COVID-19 precautions. The constituency continues to be centre of political attention.
Among several risk factors, senior officials in the Health department have pointed out increased political activity as potential reason for another spike in COVID cases. Incidentally, one of the places that the senior officials visited on Thursday was Jammikunta, which is part of Huzurabad constituency.
Besides this district, considerably high number of cases are being recorded in Khmamam and Warangal Urban.
The three districts were among the nine districts visited by a high-level team of health officials from July 11 to 13. High number of cases were recorded in the nine districts. Senior officials from the team said that congregation of people at functions or other occasions without maintaining COVID appropriate behaviour has led to coronavirus spread among 10-15 family members in these localities.
Karimnagar district Collector R.V. Karnan, the State’s Director of Public Health Dr G. Srinivasa Rao, Director of Medical Education (DME) Dr K. Ramesh Reddy, held meetings with the PHC medical officers on Thursday.
Officer on Special Duty (OSD) to the Health department Dr T. Gangadhar said that the Chief Minister has directed Health officials to visit the district where high number of cases are being recorded.
The senior officials formed into two groups and visited Jammikunta rural, Jammikunta urban and Manakondur. They spoke to the patients with virus. In Manakondur, the officials met family members of two COVID-19 victims, went through medical records, to know reasons for the deaths.
Field visits
Dr Srinivasa has directed the health staff to conduct 8,000 to 9,000 tests in a day. With focus on villages where high number of cases are recorded, medical officers were asked to spend 50% of their time in field visits to villages to contain the spread and bring the case count to zero. The DME too has asked PHC doctors to visit villages to identify cases.
