Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan has asked the two states to focus on early surveillance and aggressive contact tracing.
Amid record rise of COVID-19 cases in some districts on Maharashtra and Gujarat, the Centre has raised concerns over high fatality rate in the two states.
Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan held a meeting to discuss the situation in both Maharashtra and Gujarat and expressed concern over high fatality rate among COVID-19 patients in some districts of Maharashtra and Gujarat.
The minister has asked the two states to focus on early surveillance and aggressive contact tracing.
The meeting was attended by Gujarat deputy chief minister Nitin Patel, who is also the state's health minister, and Maharashtra health minister Rajesh Tope.
Maharashtra on Wednesday reported 1,233 new COVID-19 cases, taking its tally to 16,758. 34 more deaths were recorded in the state, taking the toll to 651. Mumbai alone has more than 10,714 cases and 412 deaths. The mortality rate in the state stands at 3.88%.
In Gujarat, 380 new cases and 28 more deaths were reported during the day, taking its total case count to 6,625 and the number of fatalities to 396. This included 291 new cases and 25 more deaths in Ahmedabad alone, where total cases reached 4,735, and the death toll rose to 298. Taking into account the death toll and the total number of cases, the fatality rate in Gujarat stands at 5.98%.
During the meeting on Wednesday, both states' preparation regarding COVID-19 management were reviewed by the Union Minister.
Vardhan stressed on the need for proper interventions like screening and testing of severe acute respiratory infections (SARI) and Influenza Like Illness (ILI) cases as this may prevent the spread of infection in other areas.
"Implementation of effective containment strategy needs to be on the top priority of the states to reduce the mortality rate. It is the need of the hour to take preventive, pre-emptive and comprehensive measures in a systematic manner and follow the protocols laid down by the Centre to prevent occurrence of fresh cases," the minister said.
It was pointed out during the meeting that in some cases, the patients either did not report their infection or reported late to the hospitals for treatment which may be because of the stigma associated with COVID-19.
He also urged the states to ensure that persons aged more than 65 years and having any non-communicable disease are screened on priority in the Ayushman Bharat-Health and Wellness Centers.
In compliance of the guidelines issued by the Centre, non-COVID-19 essential health services such as antenatal care, immunisation drives, tuberculosis case finding and treatment, providing blood transfusion for dialysis patients, treatment of cancer patients among others should not be neglected, Vardan said.
In a separate communication, the Union Home Ministry wrote a very strong letter to the West Bengal government that the COVID-19 response in the state was characterised by a very low rate of testing and a very high rate of mortality of 13.2%, which it said was by far the highest for any state.
The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) letter also flagged violations of lockdown guidelines like instances of overcrowding in markets, free movement of people in large numbers without masks, bathing of people in rivers, people playing cricket and football, serious laxity in enforcing lockdown measures in containment zones, plying of rickshaws without any restriction.
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