COVID-19: BBMP to conduct door-to-door survey in B’luru

PTI, May 1, 2020, 8:09 PM IST

Bengaluru: Alarmed by rising cases of COVID-19 in the city, the civic body on Friday decided to carry out a massive door-to-door health check-up drive here, screening all families within the municipal limits.

Passing an order to this effect, the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike commissioner B H Anil Kumar said Health Survey Teams (HST) comprising booth level officials, teachers of government, government-aided, BBMP and private schools would be formed for the purpose.

These teams would carry out a survey of all the families at the booth level in all the 198 municipal wards of the city to identify people with illness including the Severe Acute Respiratory Illness (SARI), Influenza-Like Illness (ILI) or any other disease.

“We are planning to cover at least 25 lakh families. We are aiming to constitute 17,000 HSTs but we need a minimum of 8,000 HSTs,” Kumar said.

The commissioner said arrangements have been made to organise training camps at all the 27 assembly constituencies falling in the city and directions will be given to the officers of Education department, Woman and Child Welfare Department, BBMP’s education officers and revenue officers to start preparing for the camp.

Already order has been issued to all the schools in the state capital and officers at the booth level to mandatorily attend the training programme for the door-to-door survey of COVID-19 patients having a respiratory problem or influenza-like illness.

The senior official warned the school teachers and booth level officers of action under Epidemic Diseases (Control) Act of 1897 if they do not turn up for training and refuse to take up the survey.

“Private schools and their teachers cannot refuse to take part in the drive otherwise we will initiate action against them under the Epidemic Act,” Kumar said.

As many as 141 positive cases have come to light in Bengaluru so far, including 69 discharges, 66 active cases, 5 deaths due to coronavirus and a suicide by a COVID-19 patient.

The coronavirus cases have been reported from 43 wards, whereas 24 of them have been designated with ‘Containment Zones’.

The municipal corporation has identified 1,051 primary contacts, of which 553 are under quarantine and 4,584 secondary contacts including 744 currently in isolation.

The BBMP said that it has screened 5,874 patients at its fever clinics.