November 19, 2020: The Centre on Thursday has rushed "high-level" Central teams to Haryana, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Manipur to take stock of the Covid-19 situation in the states.

"With the surge in the daily new cases and the daily fatalities in the union territory of Delhi, a spillover effect is being observed in the NCR regions and states of Haryana and Rajasthan where the number of COVID-19 positive patients is on the rise," the union health ministry said in a statement.

Dr Randeep Guleria, Director, AIIMS New Delhi is leading the three-member team bound for Haryana and Dr V K Paul, Member (Health) of Niti Aayog will be heading the Rajasthan team. Dr S K Singh, Director, National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) will be leading the Gujarat team. Dr L Swasticharan, Additional DDG, Directorate General of Health Services is heading the Manipur team.

"The teams will visit the districts reporting a high number of COVID cases and support the State's efforts towards strengthening containment, surveillance, testing, infection prevention and control measures, and efficient clinical management of the positive cases," ministry said.

The Central teams shall also guide in effectively managing the challenges related to timely diagnosis and follow up.

The Union Government has been leading the fight against the global pandemic with a 'Whole of Government' and 'Whole of Society' approach under the umbrella strategy of 'Cooperative Federalism'. As an ongoing effort to strengthen efforts of various State/UT Governments for Covid management, the Central government has been deputing Central teams from time to time to visit various States/UTs.

These teams interact with the State/UT authorities and get a first-hand understanding of the challenges and issues being faced by them so as to strengthen their ongoing activities and remove bottlenecks, if any.

After a dip in daily coronavirus cases count for some days, India is again witnessing a surge in fresh infections as 45,576 confirmed cases were reported in the last 24 hours, India reports 45,576 new COVID-19 cases, 585 deaths in last 24 hours, Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on Thursday.