The governments of various states and UTs across India, including Jammu and Kashmir, continue to implement defensive strategies against the novel coronavirus. Among others, it includes diagnostic procedures, as well as plans that limit the spread of the pathogen.
The containment strategies were actually designed to prevent community transmission and have met with variable success across several nations.
Countries like South Korea is said to have successful limited transmission by containment measures due to coordinated governmental response encompassing testing on a massive scale, and prompt contact tracing and quarantine of the infected patients.
Several countries like US, China, Italy and Spain moved from containment to mitigation, relying on non-pharmaceutical interventions such as hand hygiene, travel restrictions, school closures, and social distancing and thereafter mass vaccinations. India did it in first wave but for some reasons, ostensibly to protect livelihood, missed some of the measures in second wave. The social distancing has proven effective in pandemics to reduce and delay peak attack rates and mortality.
Experience of the various nations hitherto proves that in order to contain the spread of the pestilence, there must be combined efforts with equivalent scientific based management.
In this context and rightly so, the Chief Secretary, Dr. Arun Kumar Mehta, has called for scientific and evidence-based management of covid-19 even as he has set June 15 deadline for bringing down the positivity rate in all district including those where there is high mortality rate.
The statement comes as certain districts have high mortality rates and the same continues to be a matter of major concern to the administration.
The Chief Secretary, during a review meeting, asked all the Deputy Commissioners to ensure that any reason, be it late reporting or delayed admission to a hospital or treatment, should be identified and addressed immediately.
The district administrations have been rightly asked to work on a localized strategy for Covid mitigation keeping in view the analysis based on the five parameters already detailed out by the government. They have been also asked to concentrate not only at the district level but also to have the situation closely monitored at the sub-district level. This approach is prudent and all the concerned authorities need to render full cooperation for its success which would help restore normalcy. Of late, daily average trends including virus cases, positivity rate, active cases, and deaths have shown a down trend and measures taken so far should be continued without any complacency.