STAFF REPORTER
GUWAHATI: Track & Break COVID-19 Chain in Assam Villages: From June 1, 2021, medical teams will start visiting every household in the 28,149 villages across the State to track and break the COVID-19 chain. This is part of the Assam Community Surveillance Plan taken up to break the COVID-19 chain after the latest spike of the virus in the rural areas. Each of such teams will comprise a doctor and laboratory technicians. They will be assisted by ward members and gaoburhas or gaon panchayats.
Before the visit of the rural households by the medical teams, ASHA workers will go to every house and make lists of diseases like SARI (Severe Acute Respiratory Infection), ILI (Influenza-Like Illness), fever in the villages. The ASHA workers will discuss with their higher-ups who will fix dates for visit by the medical teams, area wise.
The medical teams will collect blood and swab samples and conduct tests. Symptomatic persons who test COVID-19 negative in the RAT (Rapid Antigen Test) will be advised to strictly follow strict home isolation rules till their RT-PCR reports are available.
During such visits, the medical teams will interact with patients, their family members and community members. They will brief them about COVID-19, the need for using masks, maintaining social distancing, quarantine, isolation, different SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures) issued by the government, etc for COVID-19 management.
The teams will decide the need for future collection and testing of samples for Japanese encephalitis, malaria, dengue, measles, rubella etc.
The objectives of the door-to-door visit by medical teams are to record the magnitude of the COVID-19 transmission in the State, to isolate the positive patients, to treat all non-COVID cases, to create a database of persons entering villages from outside and staying there etc.