Secretary asks Collectors to ensure SOP compliance

Health Secretary J Radhakrishnan has instructed district Collectors and the GCC officials to sensitise people so as to apply brake on the drastic fall in adherence to Covid-19 appropriate behaviour.

Radhakrishnan said though the cases are declining the focus has to be on the follow up of Covid-19 appropriate behaviour and follow-up of SOPs for permitted activities. Also, there is a need to follow up on those eligible for the precautionary booster dose and stressed the need to monitor daily vaccination performance and the weekly mega camp performance needs to be closely monitored and improved further.

The case fatality, since January 2022, despite being ten times lesser than the second wave, on a deeper analysis has revealed that of the total deaths 97 per cent were due to co-morbid conditions, and 93 per cent were above 50. Among them too, those not vaccinated accounted for 60 per cent, those who had taken only one dose, an additional 8 per cent.

Mentioning the fourth round of serosurvey conducted by the Directorate of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, he said it revealed that at the state level, the seroprevalence is now estimated to be at 87 per cent.

He said that the bed occupancy is now 2.6 per cent of about 1.33 lakh allocated Covid-19 beds, with 31 per cent occupancy of oxygen support beds and 5 per cent ICU beds. He said bed occupancy has been substantially less in this wave and it has been mainly attributed to vaccination levels and adherence of Covid-19 appropriate behaviour and the nature of the Omicron variant which as per the latest whole genomic sequencing of samples accounted for 97 per cent of the cases while Delta still is reported in 3 per cent of the samples.