The Centre on Friday deputed multi-disciplinary teams to Kerala, Arunachal Pradesh, Tripura, Odisha, Chhattisgarh and Manipur in view of the high number of COVID-19 cases being reported by these states. Teams will be supporting the states in their efforts to carry out a targeted Covid response and management, and effectively tackling the pandemic, a Union Health Ministry statement said. The two-member high level team to these states comprises a clinician and a public health expert, the statement said.

The teams will visit the states immediately and monitor the overall implementation of COVID-19 management, especially in testing, including surveillance and containment operations; Covid Appropriate Behaviour and its enforcement; availability of hospital beds, sufficient logistics including ambulances, ventilators, medical oxygen etc., and COVID-19 vaccination progress. The teams will monitor the situation and also suggest remedial actions, the statement said.

The Central teams will assess the situation and suggest remedial actions on public health activities to the respective state governments. The team to Manipur will be led by Dr L Swasticharan, Additional DDG and Director EMR; team to Arunachal Pradesh will be led by Dr Sanjay Sadhukhan, Professor AIIH&PH; for Tripura Dr RN Sinha; for Kerala Dr Ruchi Jain, Public Health Specialist Gr. II, RoHFW; for Odisha Dr. A Dan, Public Health Specialist AIIH&PH and for Chhattisgarh Dr Dibakar Sahu, Assistant Professor, AIIMS Raipur.

As an ongoing effort to strengthen efforts of various state and UT Governments for Covid management, the Central Government has been deputing Central teams from time to time to visit various states and UTs.

These teams interact with the state and UT 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, if any, the statement said.