This story is from November 24, 2020

Delhi: Door-to-door survey at hotspots 50% complete

The massive door-to-door survey of nearly 58 lakh people living in Covid-19 hotspots, which was started by the district authorities on November 20, is more than 50% complete, say government sources.
Delhi: Door-to-door survey at hotspots 50% complete
A team of ASHA workers and government teachers check temperature and oxygen level of people during a 5-day door-to-door survey
NEW DELHI: The massive door-to-door survey of nearly 58 lakh people living in Covid-19 hotspots, which was started by the district authorities on November 20, is more than 50% complete, say government sources.
“Over 60% of the target population living in the hotspots of South district has been surveyed. The exercise is going on well. However, the number of people found symptomatic is not as high as was initially expected,” said a district official, who didn’t share the exact number of people found symptomatic during the survey.
“In fact, the number of symptomatic people is not very high across all districts,” he added.
An official from North West district, which has the second highest population among all 11 districts, said they had already surveyed more than half of the target population in the hotspots. “Despite the large population, we have managed to complete more than half of the survey that is being conducted in areas like Kanjhawala, Saraswati Vihar and Rohini,” added the official.
“Initially, there were some problems and we also found that thermal guns and oximeters didn’t always help in completely detecting cases as many infected people didn’t have high temperature or low oxygen saturation levels. That is when we changed our strategy and our teams started asking more questions about other symptoms. Now, we are getting more patients than earlier,” said the official.
The official added that symptomatic patients were sent to the local dispensary for testing and health check-up. “The list of such people has also been shared with the dispensary and the district medical teams are calling them to come for tests,” he said.
The South district official said that apart from sending symptomatic people for testing, mobile vans had also been deployed so that everybody got tested. “We are also carrying out aggressive contact tracing of those found positive,” he added.

“It seems that Covid fatigue has set in. Our teams faced some resistance initially, but we carried on with zeal. The best thing about increased testing is not just finding Covid-positive patients and their contacts, but these vans and camps help in spreading awareness too,” said the official.
Officials of South West and East districts said even they had completed over 50% of the survey despite some initial teething problems.
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