COVID-19: Telangana to focus on preventing community transmission

Hyderabad: The State government on Monday has decided to start focusing on the possibility of community transmission of COVID-19 across the State. As part of these efforts, the Director of Public Health and Family Welfare has directed all private and government hospitals to start sharing details of patients who come to them for treatment from Severe Acute Respiratory Infections (SARI) and pneumonia.

In view of the COVID-19 outbreak, there is a need to identify admissions due to SARI and pneumonia in hospitals. This will be used as a surrogate marker for COVID-19. A rising trend of SARI or pneumonia cases will trigger the need for further investigation of COVID-19,’ Director of Public Health and Family Welfare, Dr. G. Srinivas Rao said.

Authorities said that a rising trend of high-grade pneumonia or respiratory infections in hospitals ‘will trigger the need for further investigation for COVID-19’.

Pneumonia surveillance will be done in hospitals where majority of patients get admitted for severe respiratory problems,



identical to those seen in COVID-19. All teaching hospitals, district hospitals, areas hospitals, corporate and other private hospitals are being identified as sentinel sites for surveillance.

The hospitals must daily report the number of admissions due to pneumonia and respiratory infections and also number of deaths due to such infections. The authorities have also issued broad criteria to identify the cases. Patients should be above 15 years of age, with fever, respiratory symptoms, severe cough, shortness of breath and hospitalisation.

If patients have all the above four conditions, then such cases should be immediately reported to the State Integrated Diseases Surveillance Programme (IDSP) teams on Whatsapp at the number 90597-46612 or mail to idsp@telangana.gov.in

The authorities said that the list of such patients should be maintained by all the hospitals and should be shared as and when asked. The reporting of such SARI/ pneumonia cases should start retrospectively from March 8 to understand the baseline admission of the facility.