Bhubaneswar: In a major step to ensure COVID-19 testing of all symptomatic persons and close contacts of people infected with the novel coronavirus, the Odisha Government today started the door to health screening of the people in the State.
The ASHA and ANM workers have been tasked to conduct door to door health survey in Odisha from June 16 to July 31.
The survey will cover all households in 53,845 villages and slums in all the 103 urban areas.
As per the ICMR guidelines, the State Government is testing symptomatic persons and contacts persons of COVID-19 patients, so in that step, ASHAs and Health Workers will trace the persons with COVID-19 symptoms, through the door to door survey of every house in rural areas and slums of urban areas, so that persons having symptoms shall be tested as early as possible, said Shalini Pandit, Director National Health Mission (NHM) Odisha.
“Earlier, one in every 200 asymptomatic persons was found positive for COVID-19 and now one in every 20 symptomatic persons is testing positive, as per the reports, the infection spreads more through symptomatic persons and it doesn’t spread much through asymptomatic persons even if they tested positive for the virus, so this new strategy will be helpful to track more Positive cases and they can be treated well”, Pandit stated.
She further said that the State Government is giving more importance on testing of COVID-19, now testing is being conducted in 17 testing labs of 10 districts including Regional Medical Research Centre (RMRC), Bhubaneswar, the number of testing has crossed 2 Lakh as on June 15th in the State.