The Jharkhand government is all set to carry out a mega door-to-door Covid-19 identification survey from June 18, state health secretary Nitin Kulkarni said on Monday.
“Besides Covid-19, people suffering from respiratory diseases, blood pressure, tuberculosis and cancer will also be under the testing scanner. Their sampling will be done on priority basis and tested accordingly,” Kulkarni said.
The week-long exercise will cover both rural and urban households. “I would like to appeal to every citizen of the state to cooperate in the exercise so that the Covid-19 could be checked completely in the state,” he said.
He said that the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has conducted sero-survey in 200 districts of the country to ascertain if there was any community transmission of coronavirus in any of the districts. The survey included three districts of Jharkhand-Pakur, Latehar and Simdega- where it found negligible possibility of community transmission in the three districts.
“We have requested the ICMR to conduct sero-survey across the state so that we could know the actual status of transmission in the state. We hope the survey will be completed by the end of this month,” he said.
The health secretary said Jharkhand witnessed a sudden growth in Covid-19 cases recently due to the influx of migrant workers from across the country.
According to the state disaster management department, a total of 5,11,663 migrants workers have arrived in Jharkhand so far. As many as 4,12,357 have returned to Jharkhand on 238 special Shramik trains and buses.
The health secretary said sampling of 78,423 migrant workers have been done so far, which is 15.16% of total migrant returnees. Till now, 1,477 migrants have been detected Covid-19 positive.
The migrants, who are returning from Delhi, are carrying the highest Covid-19 positivity rate. Of the total Covid-19 positive cases among migrants workers, 2.83% cases are related to the migrants who returned from Delhi, while the same is 2.3% each for the workers returned from Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.
“Eighteen persons, who returned from Bangladesh, have been found positive for Covid-19,” the health secretary said.
