[ad_1]
Hyderabad The Municipality of Hyderabad has made a major change in its strategy to contain the coronavirus in so-called containment areas. Going forward, when a Covid-19 case is detected in one house, you will not be quick to declare a wide area covering 100 houses around you as a containment zone. From now on, only that house will be treated as a containment area.
Public movement in the locality will be allowed, only the movement of people forced to be in house quarantine will be restricted.
However, authorities said, barricades will continue to be built for the entire neighborhood, and vehicle owners will have to park outside the fence.
So why is this being done? Why is the minimum containment area being reduced? According to sources highly located in the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC), this is being done to reduce costs.
This decision came after a 28-year-old ambulance driver tested positive on GHMC’s Malkajgiri Circle on April 27 and was transferred to Gandhi Hospital. Their primary and secondary contacts were traced to the Mahbubabad and Suryapet districts. No one was home, but in blind obedience to the containment guidelines, 30 officials were deployed to the area that guarded the empty house.
According to the same highly located sources, it was decided to reduce the definition of a containment zone, the smallest places to protect will require less men and material.
Therefore, from now on, if the primary contact of a Covid-19 positive person is quarantined in an apartment, the entire apartment will be considered as a containment area. The local health field assistant will contact quarantined people to supply essential services and medications.
Also, although the containment area guidelines require 24/7 service, the health department has reduced it. She has asked her two-member staff, including Asha’s Nurse and Midwife (ANM) and Asha worker, to work from 8 am to 8 pm in a single shift.
A senior GHMC official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that to minimize the containment area, the municipality’s health teams will carry out a survey within a radius of 1 km from where the main contacts of a Covid patient- 19 are quarantined at home. He said the teams will report the number of people with connections to people residing within a one kilometer radius.
“The teams will take note of people with diabetes, heart-related illnesses, cases of advanced pregnancy and others. After carrying out this exercise, officials from the district’s collector’s office, the GHMC, the health department and the police will visit the site for cross-checking and verify surveillance of the contained area. This will be done the first day after the patient’s primary contact with Covid-19 is quarantined at home. The focus will be on a single house or in the apartment building. Containment activities such as spraying disinfectants and sanitation activities will be carried out in an area of 1 km according to the protocol, “added the official.
The corporation official said the health status of people adjacent to a containment area will be reviewed by medical officials daily. “We believe this would be a better model for reducing costs and reducing panic in the containment area,” he said, citing the case of the ambulance driver whose empty house in Malkajgiri has been under surveillance by 30 officials since April 27, Although he is in the hospital and his main contacts are in the Mahabubabad and Suryapet districts. After studying such cases, the government concluded that containment should be restricted to only one individual building, the official added.
…
