KATHMANDU:The government is to expand contact tracing for identifying the COVID-19 cases.

The local levels would be made aware and the scope of contact tracing broadened within the next one week, chief specialist at the Ministry of Health and Population and COVID-19 focal person, Mahendra Prasad Shrestha, said.

Chief specialist Shrestha said contact tracing groups would be formed at every ward in the Kathmandu Valley and contact tracing would be expanded. There are 15 contact tracing teams in the valley at present.

Similarly, 1,075 contact tracing teams had been conducting the contact tracing in the local levels across the country. Four hundred and sixty teams have been mobilized in as many rural municipalities, 552 teams in 276 municipalities, 33 teams in 11 sub-metropolitan cities and 30 teams in six metropolitan cities.

According to Shrestha, the government would make the contact tracing focussed in the Kathmandu Valley initially and in districts outside the Valley thereafter.

The groups to be mobilized will conduct contact tracing of persons who had come in contact with the infected persons and also all the near relatives and family members based on the infected person’s travel history.

Follow-up support groups

Likewise, the Ministry of Health and Population is to form the ‘support group’ at every community to follow-up on the infected persons. Shrestha said one support group would be formed per a cluster of 50 houses. Each support group would have five to seven members.

The groups would monitor the infected persons and families as well as those included in contact tracing in their respective community/locality.

“It is found that infected people and people included in contact tracing are moving freely outside at present.

The support groups will now make surveillance on such people.

The group will extend support in collaboration with the Ministry if the infected persons, the persons who have given their swab for testing and those included in contact tracing have any problem,” Shrestha said.