Indore is a challenge but getting support from people in fighting COVID-19: MP govt official

New Delhi, Apr 18 () Citing "late detection" of the first confirmed coronavirus case in Madhya Pradesh's Indore last month and low capacity for conducting tests, a top state government officer on Saturday said the city remains a challenge for the health department and all possible efforts are being taken to 'detect, quarantine and treat' the infected there.

He said the Madhya Pradesh government has followed a strategy of IITT-- to first Identify coronavirus-affected areas, Isolate them, Test the people and then Treat the patients once they are found positive.

Interacting with a select group of Delhi-based journalists via video conferencing, Additional Chief Secretary (Health) of Madhya Pradesh government, Mohammed Suleman said over 12,000 high-risk cases have been identified by 2,000 teams that are conducting door-to-door surveys in the state to detect coronavirus infected cases.

"We detected our first case in Indore on March 24. I feel it was a very late detection considering the situation there. Suddenly from the first case on March 24, today there are 900 cases in Indore. So the growth (of cases there) is very fast. If we see a growth pattern, there would have been more cases (in Indore) on March 24," he said.

Suleman also pointed to possible unidentified "gaps" that resulted in non-development of the relationship of trust between the administration and people, and thus detection and treatment of infected persons.

"It is a fact that Indore is a challenge. Indore has been number 1 in cleanliness and it is a very good city. It is a big setback for us (that Indore is reporting a large number of cases)," he said.

"We are regularly trying to evaluate the situation and if there are any lacunae, we will overcome it. Today we have a strong support from the people of Indore to the state administration. Indore is now fully aware of the challenge and facing it efficiently," the officer said.

Madhya Pradesh has reported 1,360 positive cases with 892 of them in Indore alone.

The state's commercial city was in the news recently for reporting a sudden hike in the COVID-19 cases.

Suleman said 97 per cent of the total cases are in western Madhya Pradesh comprising Indore, and only 41 cases have been reported from the northern and eastern parts of the state.

"Three districts of Chhindwara, Shivpuri and Gwalior have not reported any positive case in the past 12 days. There also has been no positive case from Vidisha, Morena and Sagar districts since the last week," he said.

The senior official said over 420 contaminated areas in the state with a population of 24 lakh have been identified, and 2,000 teams have been put in place to do door-to-door surveys to identify high-risk people.

"They have done a survey of the 20 lakh population and identified 12,000 people as high-risk cases. Now, the next challenge for us is to collect samples of these (high-risk) people," he said, adding the same was being done at a fast pace.

Suleman, a 1989 batch IAS officer, said another challenge for the administration is to augment capacity to test the samples.

"Our testing capacity during the first week of March was about 150 samples in our laboratories. We have increased it to 1,250 samples. We will be reaching a target of 2,000 samples by this month end and we are keeping a target of 5,000 tests by May 15," he said, quickly adding, "God forbid, we reach a situation by then where we are required to conduct such a large number of tests".

The officer said over 20,000 samples have been collected and test reports of 14,500 samples have been received. Of these cases, 1,360 have tested positive, he said.

"Our success rate to identify positive cases out of high-risk people is 9 per cent which is the highest in the country," he said, adding the state has sufficient capacity to treat the infected people.

AKV SRY