As an alert generation mechanism to pre-empt any potential Covid-19 outbreaks in the State, Gujarat Government has roped-in medical colleges for surveillance and monitoring at district level.

In the two-layered mechanism, Epidemic Intelligence Units (EIUs) are formed at district level with professors of medical colleges and experts equivalent to assistant professors heading it. The district-level EIU assesses and monitors the crucial Covid-related data on daily basis and tries to draw a trend, if any.

The crucial daily parameters it observes include Covid-19 tests conducted, test: positivity rate, HRCT test records, calls received on 108/104 helplines, daily footfalls at OPDs, IPDs with Covid-19-like symptoms at private and government hospitals in the districts.

The district-level EIUs report to a State-level EIU, which assesses and monitors the data received from districts and looks at the emerging trends of infections. The State-level unit is headed by professor of the Preventive and Social Medicine (PSM) department of the medical college.

For every district, there is one medical college assigned the responsibility to set up an EIU. The districts without a medical college are covered by the nearby medical college. “These EIUs collect data from primary sources. This data is analysed for any emerging trend to pre-empt any hotspots, or pockets with cause of concern,” said Jai Prakash Shivahare, Commissioner and Secretary of Health and medical services, Government of Gujarat.

Besides the professors of medical colleges, each EIU has Chief District Medical Officer, Chief District Health Officer, epidemic medical officer and the support staff as its members.

“We have fully activated these teams and started collecting all these information to do the projections. This is a very important alert generation mechanism. Based on the daily insights we receive from these EIUs, we design our response strategy accordingly,” Shivahare told BusinessLine .

Currently, Gujarat is witnessing a downward trend in the Covid-19 cases. On July 9, the State reported total 56 cases. The active caseload in the State is 1356 as recoveries far exceed the new infections. More than a dozen districts of the 33 total districts in the State have reported zero case on Friday. But the officials informed that the surveillance and monitoring through EIUs will remain activated as long as the epidemic prevails.

“Even if there is no case in districts, we will continue our surveillance on daily basis, only then we will get to know at an early stage if there is something brewing and requires corrective measures,” he said.

“The way we are preparing for the third wave, and with our vaccination progressing well, we are likely to be protected. And we hope that any next wave will not be as bad as previous one. But still we are preparing for the worst case scenario,” he added.

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