With the establishment of two sampling centres in Sumbal, authorities have started random testing in red zones of Hajin area here.
More than 150 tests were conducted in last five days onrandomly picked people from the most affected villages of Gund Jahangir andNaidkhai.
An official said for the last two days they testedvolunteers who were on ground and some sanitation workers who had got exposedin quarantine centres.
“We plan to take samples of health workers, ambulancedrivers, police personnel and home delivery persons as well,” he said.
Another official said they were the first to have startedtesting of the randomly selected people. “This was possible only afterestablishment of the facilities here,” the official said.
The official said they have a robust contact tracingmechanism in place. “We tracked almost all persons with travel history,” hesaid.
Special Officer COVID19, Syed ShahnawazBukhari said thehealth teams have screened more than 23,000 people, which is 25% of totalpopulation of Hajin.
“Our aim is to ensure all patients with any symptoms, travelhistory and contact history are picked up for testing,” Bukhari said.”After initial peak we had relatively stable last week for Hajin block butwe can’t predict what will happen next week. So we aren’t complacent at all,”the official said.
Bukahri expressed gratitude to SKIMS authorities. “Wereceived enormous support from the SKIMS. They have conducted more than 1,000tests so far in Hajin alone,” he said. “It is with help of SKIMS authoritiesthat we were able to test 75 percent population of Danger Mohalla and GundJahangir which have reported 48 cases so far.”
He said while 90 percent of cases tested have been reportedas COVID negative, 85 cases were detected positive for the virus including oneperson who died last month. “Nearly 90% of these cases are from three smallhamlets of GundJahangeer, Naidkhai and SK Bala”, he said.
Bukhari said the good thing was that 18 COVID19 positivecases from Hajin have recovered and have been discharged from hospitals.