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Thiruvananthapuram: As the state continues to record the highest number of cases in the country, the body of government doctors in Kerala on Tuesday urged the state government to strictly implement the Covid measures, including a 17-day quarantine for infected persons and meticulous contact tracing. Making further appeal, the Kerala Government Medical Officers’ Association (KGMOA) submitted to Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan that restrictions should be imposed in specific micro-containment zones to control the spread of the virus.
“Time-tested strategy of contact tracing and isolation which ensured an effective control during the first phase must be followed. Contact tracing must be entrusted to local RRT with the help of the workforce from other non-essential services. All positive cases must be quarantined for 17 days,” KGMOA said in the memorandum.
“Those with Covid like symptoms must also be quarantined even if tested negative on Antigen testing and RT-PCR repeated if symptoms persist,” it added.
The association also said that the restrictions should be imposed in specific micro containment zones like wards, rather than the whole panchayat/municipality/corporation.
“Present strategy of categorising areas based on TPR alone should be replaced by indicators like daily positive cases per 10,000, active cases per 10,000 along with TPR”, KGMOA said.
The association also urged the state government to set targets and criteria for testing to reduce TPR should be avoided. “Purpose of testing should be to identify cases rather than creating a false sense of security. So targeted testing of all symptomatic and their contacts must be the rule. More effective surveillance and testing must be done in thickly populated areas like colonies, coastal areas etc,” it said.
Corona cases: Kerala on Tuesday reported 23,676 fresh COVID cases pushing the total infection count to 34.49 lakh, with the number of people succumbing to the virus touching 17,103 after 148 additional deaths. On Monday, the state had reported 13,984 cases after recording more than 20,000 cases for six consecutive days.
As many as 15,626 people have been cured of the infection since Monday, taking the total recoveries to 32,58,310 and the number of active cases in the state to 1,73,221.
Some of the worst affected districts in the state are Malappuram with 4276 infections, Thrissur 2908, Ernakulam 2702, Kozhikode 2416, Palakkad 2223, Kollam 1836, Alappuzha 1261, Kottayam 1241, Kannur 1180 and Trivandrum 1133.
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