Effective surveillance at points of entry delayed arrival, spread of Covid in India: Government

India's response to Covid at points of entry was proactive, pre-emptive and graded, the Centre said on Wednesday underlining that effective surveillance at such points delayed the arrival and spread of the disease, giving time for developing the necessary health infrastructure and capacities to effectively handle it.

Points of entry (PoEs) are the first line of defence for the country to protect from any public health emergency of international concern, Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan said.

"The effective surveillance at PoEs, delayed the arrival and spread of COVID-19 which allowed the nation ample time to develop the necessary public health infrastructure and capacities to effectively handle the pandemic," he said while addressing a workshop on "Roadmap to Strengthen Public Health Preparedness and Response Capabilities of Points of Entry (PoEs) in India".


The two-day workshop was attended by officials from airport health organisations, port health organisations, land port health organisations, IDSP, NCDC, disaster management officials, and partner organisations like NIDM, SDMAs and CISF.

Additional secretary Lav Agarwal highlighted the various commendable innovations taken to strengthen PoEs against the pandemic which included paperless health screening, Air Suvidha portal, the deployment of digital technologies to facilitate planning, surveillance, testing, contact tracing, a health ministry statement said.

"He added that we need to institutionalise the lessons learnt in the pandemic for the future generations. The best practices and benchmarks of performance at points of entry we have today have evolved by our collective efforts as a team," the statement said.

The workshop, which began on Tuesday, was organised by Central International Health (IH) Division, Directorate General of Health Services and Union Ministry of Health.

The aim of the workshop was to provide a platform to carry forward the lessons learnt during the pandemic for future strengthening and also for cross learning and knowledge sharing to bring together various stakeholders working in the field of public health and disaster management, the statement said.