TheAssamhealth department on Tuesday launched a drive to screen and test people in 28,000 villages across 33 districts for Covid-19 in a bid to isolate the maximum number ofhidden positive cases.
TheAssam Community Surveillance Plan(ACSP), as the drive has been named, has been undertaken to break the chain of transmission through active vigil. In the first wave of the pandemic last year, a similar initiative was carried out in the villages. Isolation of all positive cases is the primary goal of the drive to ascertain the magnitude of the Covid-19 transmission. But the actual target is beyond that and has been named Covid Plus, to enlist potential cases ofsevere acute respiratory infections(SARI), influenza like illness (ILI), fever or any other Health issues.
Many cases of malaria, dengue and vector-borne diseases like Japanese Encephalitis (JE) are suspected to have been covered up fearing Covid-19 detection.