Maha in beginning of second COVID wave: Centre

New Delhi, Mar 16: Maharashtra is in the beginning of a second COVID-19 wave, a central team report has said, highlighting that there is very limited active effort to track, test, isolate cases and quarantine contacts, and there is no adherence to COVID appropriate behaviour among people in rural and urban areas in the state.
Based on the central team report, Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan has written a letter to the Maharashtra government, stating ‘measures such as night curfews, weekend lockdowns etc. have very limited impact on containing/suppressing the transmission’ and urged the state to focus on strict containment strategies, strengthening surveillance and augmenting testing.
In a letter to Maharashtra Chief Secretary Sitaram Kunte, Bhushan said even though the health infrastructure is adequate as of now, the ‘state should plan for a worse-case scenario with sufficient lead time’.
The central team which visited the state from March 7-11 inferred in its report that the administrative mechanism should be re-instated to the level witnessed in August-September 2020 to contain/supress COVID transmission.