Central teams to oversee Covid situation in four states including Odisha

New Delhi, Sep 1: Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on Monday decided to deploy high-level Central teams to four states -- Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, and Odisha, which are witnessing a sudden surge in the number of coronavirus cases and reporting high-mortality. Each of the multi-sectoral teams will be composed of an epidemiologist and a public health expert. The teams will support the state efforts towards strengthening containment, surveillance, testing and efficient clinical management of the positive cases. They shall also guide the states in effectively managing the challenges related to timely diagnosis and follow up. Of these four States, Uttar Pradesh has the maximum number of active cases pegged at 54,666, followed by Odisha (27,219), Chhattisgarh (13,520) and Jharkhand which has 11,577 active cases. In terms of cumulative cases till date, Uttar Pradesh has 2,25,632, Odisha (1,00,934), Jharkhand (38,435) and Chhattisgarh has 30,092 cases. Most number of deaths are reported in Uttar Pradesh (3423) while Odisha, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh are reporting 482, 410 and 269 deaths cumulatively. As an ongoing effort, the Central Government has been deputing central teams from time to time to visit various states to interact with the authorities and get a first-hand understanding of the challenges and issues being faced by them so as to strengthen their ongoing activities and remove bottlenecks. With 78,512 fresh coronavirus infections in 24 hours, India's tally mounted to 3,621,245 on Monday, while the death toll climbed to 64,469 with 971 more fatalities, said the Health Ministry. (IANS)