Friday, 23 December 2022 | PNS | DEHRADUN
The Health secretary R Rajesh Kumar has directed all chief medical officers (CMOs) of the State to monitor the new variant of Covid-19. The secretary took a meeting of all the CMOs of the State in a virtual medium on Thursday and reviewed the preparation of the department on the Covid front. He said that recently some countries of the world like China, Japan, USA, Korea and Brazil have reported an increase in the number of cases of the disease and the disease is continuing to be a challenge for the health system. Kumar told the CMOs that the virus of Covid 19 gets mutated from time to time and the new variants get manifested into a public health issue from time to time so it is necessary to monitor the virus and its variants continuously. He said that the CMOs should follow the operational guideline for revised surveillance strategy in context of Covid 19 of the government of India issued in June 2022 for identification, isolation, testing and management of the Covid patients. He appealed to the general public not to panic and follow the directives given from time to time. The Health secretary also sent a letter to all district magistrates in which he said that all the patients having influenza like symptoms should be compulsorily entered into in the Integrated Health Information Platform (IHIP) portal and awareness should be created in the general public about adopting Covid appropriate behaviour and getting vaccinated. Kumar said that the availability of ICU beds, ventilators, Oxygen cylinders and necessary medicines should be ensured. He directed the DMs to ensure that the patients with mild symptoms of the disease are monitored and samples of positive patients should be sent to Government Doon Medical College (GDMC) for whole genome sequence (WGS).
