On Covid resurgence, TN health official says no need to panic, surveillance mechanism in place
Chennai: Tamil Nadu Director of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, T S Selvavinayagm on Tuesday appealed to the public not to panic about
Covid resurgence
as a strict
surveillance mechanism
was in place in the state.
The present situation was not alarming and the pandemic like so many other thousands of viruses was under continuous monitoring, he said.
Allaying the apprehensions of the people on a possible outbreak of the pandemic, Selvavinayagam said in a video message that neither the World Health Organisation nor the central government has issued any advisory on Covid-19 outbreak.
"The Health department is closely monitoring all viruses including Covid through the Integrated Health Information Platform (IHIP) portal which allowed real-time reporting of data, modelling and analysis and this was integrated with other health programmes," he said.
Surveillance is being carried out daily on this portal through the involvement of 4,000 plus institutions.
In addition, along with MIST (a research programme to understand and prevent
airborne viral transmissions
), Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), and the National Institute of Edidemiology (NIE), the DPH has launched a sentinel surveillance to monitor all ILI (
Influenza-like Illness
) and SARI (
Severe Acute Respiratory Infection
) cases.
It also involved the participation of two rural and two urban PHCs, and medical colleges in four districts.
"So, all outbreaks are under continuous monitoring. Tamil Nadu's health infrastructure is vibrant and the state has the capacity to go on an expansion anytime," Selvavinayagam said in the nearly four-minute video.
"The public will be informed of outbreak if any. Under the present circumstances, there is no need to panic about Covid because the Tamil Nadu government has taken up a surveillance mechanism. If infection occurs, it will be informed to the public immediately," he added.
The official clarified that he had to explain the current situation due to reports in a section of the media on Covid-19 re-emergence.
Covid has not been totally eradicated. And like lakhs of viruses or bacteria when Covid made an appearance then it will be controlled and an equilibrium status will be maintained. The preventive measures were based on the virulence of the virus and its impact.
"Ten infections among one lakh people, ten infections in ten lakh people and ten infections among 7.8 crore population in Tamil Nadu can't be considered as same," the DPH stressed.
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