New Delhi, Aug 27 (ANI): Cabinet Secretary Rajiv Gauba on Thursday held video conference (VC) with the chief secretaries and health secretaries of nine states and one union territory and urged them to proactively limit COVID transmission and keep the mortality below one per cent.

The states which attended the meeting were Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Telangana, Gujarat, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Andhra Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir.

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Maharashtra has reported the highest number of COVID-19 cases in the country followed by Tamil Nadu. These nine states and Jammu and Kashmir account for 89 per cent of deaths of the total fatalities in the country in the last two weeks.

An official release said that Union Health Secretary made a detailed presentation on the current status of COVID-19 in these states with a focus on districts reporting high case fatality.

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He also talked of the need to refine as well as strengthen approach and strategies relating to testing, contact tracing, surveillance, containment, home isolation, availability of ambulances, hospital beds, oxygen and treatment protocols.

"The states/UT were advised to proactively take steps towards reducing case fatality to less than one per cent across all districts," the release said.

They were advised to focus on effective containment, contact tracing and surveillance and ensuring that at least in 80 per cent of new positive cases, all close contacts should be traced and tested with 72 hours.

They were urged to ensure a minimum of140 tests per million per day in all districts while targeting a positivity/confirmation rate of less than 5 per cent and leveraging antigen tests in containment zones/ healthcare settings and retesting of all symptomatic negatives with RT-PCR

They were also advised to put in the public domain the availability of beds and ambulances across COVID facilities while significantly reducing ambulance response time.

Union Health Secretary, DG ICMR and Member (Health), NITI Aayog were among those present. (ANI)

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