War rooms scaled down, turned into surveillance cells

Zonal war rooms, nerve centres of the city’s response to the second wave, have now been scaled down. Once teeming with hundreds of telecallers and executives on every shift, they now wear a deserted l

Zonal war rooms, nerve centres of the city’s response to the second wave, have now been scaled down. Once teeming with hundreds of telecallers and executives on every shift, they now wear a deserted look with less than 20% of the staff strength compared to during the second wave. At the peak of the second wave, these war rooms, tasked with telephonic triaging of patients and bed allotment, also came under flak over allegations of a bed blocking scam, triggering a set of reforms. However, with caseload low now, the BBMP has shifted to physical triaging and bed allotment is no longer being done. Hence, the role of these war rooms has completely changed. Staffed with two epidemiologists, they are now tasked with surveillance and predictive analysis of emerging trends of COVID-19 in their zones. “The surveillance has helped us make an early intervention in emerging micro-clusters in wards. These rooms are not only monitoring wards reporting more cases, but also those reporting very few, trying to analyse reasons for this. In many wards, interventions like micro containment zones or increasing testing have paid off well,” said D. Randeep, Special Commissioner, Health, BBMP.