This story is from December 21, 2020

Covid-19: Ramp up testing & take vaccine meet seriously, Maharashtra told

The Centre has written to the chief secretary expressing serious concern over the decline in Maharashtra’s daily testing numbers and called for immediate steps to reverse this trend. Principal health secretary, Dr Pradeep Vyas, on Saturday asked district collectors, municipal commissioners and CEOs to pull up their socks, saying the state was almost at the bottom of the tests per million ranking in the country. Districts have also been asked to hold their vaccine task force meetings by December 25.
Covid-19: Ramp up testing & take vaccine meet seriously, Maharashtra told
State’s testing average has stagnated at 60,000-65,000 per day (File photo)
MUMBAI: The Centre has written to the chief secretary expressing serious concern over the decline in Maharashtra’s daily testing numbers and called for immediate steps to reverse this trend. Principal health secretary, Dr Pradeep Vyas, on Saturday asked district collectors, municipal commissioners and CEOs to pull up their socks, saying the state was almost at the bottom of the tests per million ranking in the country.
Districts have also been asked to hold their vaccine task force meetings by December 25.
In a scathing letter, Dr Vyas said the state’s daily testing average has been stagnating in the range of 60,000-65,000. Calling it the state’s weakest point in the fight against Covid-19, he said Maharashtra has fallen much behind the national average of per million testing. “Considering the size of our states and resources available, it looks very odd,” he wrote. He further added that only nine districts; Mumbai, Akola, Aurangabad, Buldhana, Kolhapur, Nagpur, Nandurbar, Sindhudurg and Washim could achieve more than 50% of their RT-PCR test targets. Of these, only Sindhudurg and Washim could reach 70% of the target.
The principal secretary also sought rationalization of Covid facilities in light of declining cases and called for urgent attention to non-Covid services. “It has been seen that the number of doctors and staffers are 10-15 times the number of admitted Covid patients in some centres,” he wrote, adding steps must be taken to move patients to one place for optimal utilisation of resources.
He particularly flagged the need to convert more facilities into non-Covid. During a recent mission to find active TB cases, Dr Vyas said it was found that several Xray facilities were unavailable for non-Covid work and operation theatres were nonfunctional. He said all OTs and labour rooms in rural and sub-district hospitals should be made operational.
In Mumbai, scores of midlevel private hospitals across the city’s 24 wards have reconverted to non-Covid facilities as Covid cases dropped drastically in the past two months. The current bed occupancy for Covid-19 beds has dropped to 26%. Of the 16,437 Covid beds in Mumbai, over 12,200 are lying vacant.
Civic officials said many more nursing homes and hospitals have sought permission to convert to non-Covid facility. “We are getting requests from many to return to non-Covid work and since that is important too, we are granting immediate permissions,” said Dr Mangala Gomare, BMC’s executive health officer.
Meanwhile, as part of vaccine preparedness, Dr Vyas has asked district-, block- and corporation-level task force meetings to be held by December 25. He pointed out that in several places such meetings have not been held so far. He has also asked Dr Deepak Mhaisekar, advisor to the chief minister, Dr Subhash Salukhe, advisor to government and officials from the public health department to visit districts and monitor the progress.
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About the Author
Sumitra Debroy

Sumitra Deb Roy is a health journalist with more than 17 years of experience across India’s leading newspapers. She is currently a senior assistant editor with the Times of India, where she has extensively covered the Covid-19 pandemic and highlighted the unprecedented challenges faced by the health systems in Mumbai and Maharashtra. She recently co-authored a book titled “Mumbai Fights Back” that chronicles the city’s battle with Covid-19. She holds a postgraduate degree in journalism from the Asian College of Journalism in Chennai and a bachelor’s in political science from Calcutta University.

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