10 Things We Learnt While Surviving

Context: India must identify the best practices behind the success in some countries as well as Indian states in tackling Covid-19.

10 Best Practices for Fighting Covid-19

• Extensive diagnostic testing: like Kerala (walk-in sample kiosks) and Karnataka (random testing).

• In absence of testing: oximeter readings (door-to-door thermal screening exercise (Bengaluru).

• Rigorous contact tracing:

• New Zealand: scanning QR codes placed at different locations to create a repository of individuals movement. 
• Kerala: a combination of GIS mapping, mobile tracing, and voluntary information sharing.

• Effective and timely treatment: through timely reporting of symptoms, early identification, and admission of high-risk individuals, adequate availability of ventilators, identification of large facilities for setting up makeshift hospitals and one uniform medical intervention as a common platform where doctors can share the interventions that worked for patients with specific symptoms.

• Institutional quarantine: to tackle COVID at the source like Vietnam and Dharavi in Mumbai.

• Schools, clubs, and complexes into institutional quarantine centers with adequate facilities.

• Stringent containment: by identifying hotspots and undertaking aggressive containment measures.

• Hyper-localization: sealing affected clusters, while the remaining areas remain functional.

• Maximise use of data analytics and bring data transparency: standardised and real-time data reporting to ensure that meaningful insights have been drawn out of data.

• Leverage technology: Aarogya Setu helps in identifying hotspots and breaking the chain of infection. 

• Bengaluru: quarantine compliance through clicking and uploading of selfies, and heat map.
• Kerala: app for tracking assets such as ambulances, police vehicles and supply trucks.

• Enforcement: for strict monitoring of rules instituted to curb Covid’s spread.

• Rajasthan, Bhilwara: ruthless containment, the imposition of a curfew and limited mobility. 

• Online training and protocols: for frontline workers to make them aware of emerging trends in field surveillance, sample collection, clinical management and quarantine facility management.

• Public adherence and community participation: social distancing and wearing of masks must be maintained by the citizenry.