BMC restarts surveillance in slums
BHUBANESWAR: The Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) on Saturday resumed household health mapping in slums and tracking of travel history of slum-dwellers after a person was detected with Covid-19 in Salia Sahi — the city’s largest slum — on Friday.
The BMC officials said bringing all 536 slums here under surveillance was part of its exercise to identify people who had returned to the city recently. “We will decide on whether to quarantine a single household in a locality or 10 to 12 households together on a case-by-case basis. The most important task is to aggressively carry out tracking of health and travel history of people. Many have returned to the city by train and the registration process at source (railway station) has been done away with,” said a BMC officer.
Anganwadi, Asha and Mahila Arogya Samiti members have been asked to move to the slums and prepare reports that will be analysed for further intervention. Around 1,000 personnel will be deployed in slums to prepare these reports, like was done in April and till mid-May. “The Child Development Project Officer will oversee the drive and help analyse each suspected case to check further spread of the disease,” said a BMC officer.
Officials said field workers had been trained to maintain safety while surveying households. They have been given tips on interacting with people while moving from door to door and writing details in the proper format, a BMC officer said.
The BMC had stopped household health mapping and tracking of travel history in slums in the middle of May as no case had been found in them. It restarted these processes on a day five new cases were reported in the capital, taking the city’s total cases to 86 and active cases to 32. The new cases were detected in Dumduma (where one case was found on Friday), Old Town, Ghatikia, Pokhariput and Gajapati Nagar.
Of the five new patients, four are persons who were under quarantine. While two persons had returned from West Bengal, one each had come to the city from Gujarat and Delhi. The lone local patient is a resident of Gajapati Nagar.