28-08-2020

Amid fears that the Covid cases will peak in September, the health department has come up with a revised sentinel surveillance plan for the state. One of the major changes is replacing the RT-PCR tests for sentinel surveillance with rapid antigen assay. Through this, the department expects to get results faster.

"Active clusters will be excluded from sentinel surveillance. It will be conducted in all panchayats, municipalities and corporations every week. The people will be categorised into ten groups like elderly individuals in the general population, workers in the unorganised sector, elderly and vulnerable persons in the coastal and tribal population, and people in urban slums," the directive sent to districts says. The department feels the clusters could be detected early through sentinel surveillance. It will also help in rolling out containment strategies, emergency response systems and containment of the clusters.