Divisional Commissioner Kashmir Pandurang K Pole on Thursday said that the administration was mulling “to rebuild its strategy” of dealing with the pandemic while “identification, isolation, testing and treatment” remained its continuing focus.
Speaking with Greater Kashmir, the Div Com said that the focus of the administration was to “restrict the spread of Covid-19 and at the same time do treatment of cases already detected positive.”
“We are mulling a strategy to restrict the spread of Covid-19 and will soon have a revised policy ready. The new strategy will be made public in a suitable timeframe,” Pole told Greater Kashmir.
The Divisional Commissioner said that the surge in the cases has not been found in all the districts “but is limited to just four or five districts.”
“Baramulla, Srinagar, Shopian and Kulgam are the districts that are worst affected. Bandipora, Ganderbal, Kupwara and even Pulwama have considerably lesser number of cases,” Pole said.
He said that Anantnag and Budgam are “moderate” in terms of the impact of the pandemic.
Pole said that the focus of the administration was to conduct aggressive sampling.
“We have increased the Covid-19 sampling and testing manifold. Till a few days back we used to have per day testing at the rate of almost 2500 tests but the sampling has now increased to 4000 per day,” Pole said.
The Div Com said administration was doing “a cause analysis” of each death due to Covid-19. “We can say that all the recent fatalities due to Covid-19 were of the patients who reached the hospital at the eleventh hour leaving little scope for the doctors to do much,” he said.
The decision of the divisional administration to revise its Covid-19 policy has come at a time when J&K witnessed 10 Covid-19 related deaths in the past 24 hours. This included nine from Kashmir and one from Jammu region.
Pole said the new strategy will be “an effective one to help address the present situation.”