Mon district along Indo-Myanmar border in Nagaland is way ahead of other districts and even the state government in responding to the call to prevent and contain COVID19 pandemic.
The district administration, led by deputy commissioner Thavaseelan K. and other authorities have put in place a slew of measures and arrangements to combat the virus much before the other districts.
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These measures were subsequently followed by other districts.
Mon District COVID19 War Room was set up at the District Rural Development Agency conference hall on April 10, four days before Nagaland governor R.N. Ravi suggested the same for all the districts on April 14.
Subsequently, chief secretary Temjen Toy on April 21 directed all the deputy commissioners to set up District COVID19 War Rooms.
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Thavaseelan said to carry out the exercise in the district, 891 teams comprising village or ward level task forces, ASHAs, ANMs, Anganwadi workers and teachers were formed to ensure effective and holistic response to the crisis
Even though Mon district has not recorded any COVID19 positive case, the district war room adopted an “active case search strategy” on April 13 to prevent and contain the outbreak throughout the district.
Accordingly, each ward/village was divided into units of 50 households based on the recently concluded economic census, and a team of two conducted surveys on symptoms, travel history, contact with infected people, and so on.
Thavaseelan said the data collection for each and every single household in Mon district was completed on April 17.
Thavaseelan said the war room comprises officials from district administration, police, health and family welfare and various line departments of the district.
It acts as a single point for information collection in addition to monitoring people under quarantine on a daily basis, he added.
He said four sub-divisional war rooms have been set up in Tobu, Aboi, Tizit and Naginimora sub-divisions to function as an auxiliary of and in tandem with the District COVID19 War Room.
He said the district administration conducted a day-long training on contact listing and tracing for COVID19 District Control Room/war room personnel, police and frontline health workers on April 20.
The objective of the contact listing and tracing plan is to trace all suspected persons who have come in contact with COVID19 positive patients and quarantine/isolate them as the case may be.
A sample collection booth, also known as Walk-In- Sample Kiosk, was installed at Mon District Hospital on April 20.
The DC said the kiosk was constructed for the safety of the health workers.
It acts as a physical barrier between the patient and the health worker during the sample collection.
This kiosk will also reduce the use of number of PPE as the doctor collecting the sample from inside the kiosk does not require donning a complete PPE set.
To remain safe from violence, the DC urged the public or the affected people to contact the helpline No 181/ 9485239098 or Sakhi-One Stop Centre, Mon, at 6009150274 for assistance and rehabilitation.
COVID19 volunteers for Mon district were trained in the conference hall of the DC office in Mon on Thursday.
The training was conducted in two batches.
The first batch comprised volunteers from Red Cross, Youth Club and Nehru Yuva Kendra while the second batch was Grade-IV government servants requisitioned for COVID19 duty, Thavaseelan said.
He said the volunteers were trained on the role they would need to play in delivery of essential commodities in the event of COVID19 outbreak in the district.
Altogether 88 volunteers attended the training.