This story is from June 27, 2020

Pune district lags in contact tracing, ratio less than four per case

The district’s performance on the crucial contact tracing front in the Covid-19 fight has been the poorest in the Pune revenue division till the last week.
Pune district lags in contact tracing, ratio less than four per case
Representative image
PUNE: The district’s performance on the crucial contact tracing front in the Covid-19 fight has been the poorest in the Pune revenue division till the last week.
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According to the Pune division’s dashboard of June 20, the contact tracing ratio of Pune district was just 3.9 as against Kolhapur’s 14.7, Sangli and Satara’s 11, and Solapur’s 9 per positive case. The dashboard data stated that while there were 3,423 positive cases last week in Pune district, the total contacts traced were only 13,438 — less than four persons per patient.
According to the set standards, the contact tracing ratio behind every positive case should be at least 15 — seven high-risk and eight low-risk contacts.

After analysing the dashboard data, public health expert R Jotkar said there appeared to be a room to augment the contact tracing in Pune to attain at least 15 contacts per case. “Only Kolhapur, with 14.7 contact ratio, appears near-perfect in this context. The local deterrent is contact tracing and it has to be addressed,” he said.
Epidemiologist from Public Health Foundation of India, Bengaluru, Giridhara Rao told TOI that there was no fixed limit for contact tracing. “Karnataka did more than 45 per case in the initial period. The surge in cases in urban areas now is the natural progression of pandemic because of increased mobility and testing. At this stage, we must not focus too much on index (infected person)-based contact tracing but go for house-to-house syndromic surveillance twice a week,” he said.

Rao stressed that strict contact tracing of positive cases and isolation of symptomatics would reduce the transmission significantly. “For this, community participation is absolutely necessary. It is time to involve NGOs for strengthening the community surveillance and have community care centres and hospitals,” he said.
Several other public health experts claimed that faster contact tracing was essential to reduce Covid-19 deaths. State health experts also stressed on it ahead of more lockdown relaxations. An administrative official said with more tests being conducted in the state now and the subsequent higher number of patients, the time frame to track all high-risk and low-risk contacts was limited.
The action summary report emphasised on increasing the contact tracing ratio, ramping up the testing facility, and early identification of people with comorbidities and moving them to hospitals.
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