Kerala COVID Surge: Central Team Finds Lack Of Active Surveillance And Low Levels Of Contract Tracing In State, Says Report

The Central team, which was sent to Kerala by the Union Health Ministry to review the Covid-19 situation in the state, has returned and submitted its report to the Centre.

The six-member team, headed by National Centre for Disease Control director Dr Sujeet Kumar, visited the southern state to take stock of the situation and recommend appropriate public health interventions.

Kerala has been witnessing a continuous rise in Covid-19 cases, with active cases touching 1.7 Lakh on 3 August, and new daily positive cases over 22,000.

In its report, the team reportedly highlighted the lack of active surveillance to detect cases, and low levels of contract tracing in state, which is resulting in an undetected pool of asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic cases.

On Wednesday (4 August), Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya said that the team has returned from the state and submitted its report. The minister informed that he also spoke with Kerala's Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and discussed the matter of rising Covid-19 cases in the state.

Mandaviya further informed that he had written a letter to CM Vijayan, asking him to take "more proactive measures and precautions to control the ongoing situation in Kerala".

"I have sought the State’s cooperation in managing the situation and have assured Central Government's complete support," the Union Health Minister said.

According to a Economic Times report, a Health Ministry source familiar with the report submitted by the team said that there is not enough "active surveillance" in most districts of Kerala.

“Case detection is mainly through testing of those reporting to health facilities with Covid-like illness,” the sources were quoted as saying.

Further, the team also found an "abysmally" low level of tracing, another source said.

The experts also found an “abysmally low” level of contact tracing, another source said.

In Kerala's Mallapuram district, just 1.5 contacts were being traced for every case, on an average, which reportedly implies that even the primary contacts like family members are being missed as the average family in the district is over five.

“This lack of contact tracing, results in an undetected pool of asymptomatic/ mildly symptomatic individuals in the community,” the sources said.

Further, the proportion of gold standard RT-PCR to antigen tests was 20:80 in many districts of the state and average daily tests conducted were on a downward trend despite the rises in the number of cases.

As per the report, institutional quarantine and isolation facilities in the state also had “low acceptance”, which, according to the team, contributed to transmission of Covid-19 within families.

“This was visible during visits to field areas. Most of the members of large joint families were found positive,” one of the sources said.

In addition, the team also found that the containment and micro-containment zones were not defined as per the Centre's guidelines.