The World Health Organisation (WHO) recently praised Uttar Pradesh's Yogi Adityanath government for its door to door COVID-19 testing campaign to contain the spread of COVID-19 amid the second wave of the pandemic.
In its report titled, 'Uttar Pradesh Going The Last Mile To Stop COVID-19', the WHO said, "The Uttar Pradesh government's house-to-house active case finding of COVID-19 in rural areas to contain transmission by testing people with symptoms for rapid isolation, disease management and contact tracing."
According to the report, the state resorted to the proven and tested measures of "micro-planning, house visits, concurrent monitoring and follow-ups". These measures were the basis of India's polio eradication strategy.A
The WHO said the Uttar Pradesh government has formed 141,610 teams headed by 21,242 supervisors from the state health department. These teams covered over 97,941 villages in 75 districts.
Each team consists of two members who visit homes in villages and remote hamlets. They test everyone with symptoms of COVID-19 using Rapid Antigen Tests (RAT) kits. "Those found positive are isolated and given a medicine kit. All the contacts of those who test positive are quarantined and tested using an RT-PCR at home by a rapid response team," the report noted.
Additionally, the report said, two mobile vans were allocated to each block in every district to test people showing symptoms of COVID-19.
The WHO report also said that their officials who were on the ground to monitor the situation were sharing real-time feedback with the state government for immediate corrective action to ensure quality. "On an inaugural day, the WHO field officers monitored over 2,000 government teams and visited at least 10,000 households," the report said.
Those with symptoms are tested and given medicine kits and information on quarantining and isolation, both at home and in hospitals. People without signs of COVID-19 are urged to get vaccinated and follow COVID-appropriate behaviours to prevent transmission in rural areas of India's most populated state.