Covid infection did not appear to have spread alarmingly in rural Jharkhand, much to the relief of all concerned.

The interim findings of an intensive public health survey (IPHS) in rural areas that will end on Saturday found the infection rate to be 0.52 per cent only, indicating the spread was not alarming.

The state government had initiated the survey for assessing spread of Covid-19 infection in villages, particularly after a large number of migrant workers returned to their homes from different parts of the country during the peak of the second phase, most of them without getting checked on their way.

As a part of IPHS, teams comprising rural officials who were accompanied by women health workers known as sahiyas started conducting a door-to-door survey across the state on May 25 that would continue till Saturday (June 5).

They screened the people and segregated those who had Covid-like symptoms for conducting rapid antigen test (RAT) on them.

According to data shared by the information, education and communication (IEC) wing of the state health department, the survey covered 42,98,993 households in the state and screened 2,13,54,053 persons till Wednesday.

RAT was conducted on 1,55,426 persons who were found to have Covid-like symptoms but only 811 among them tested positive.

There were 36 children among those 811 infected persons. While seven among them were children below one year of age and only one in the age-group of 1 to 6 years, rest 18 were above 6 but within 18 years of age.

The survey showed the infection rate in rural Jharkhand was just 0.52 per cent which was far below the state’s overall infection rate of 2.14 per cent on June 2, suggesting the spread of infection was much more in urban areas.

But the spread of the infection also considerably reduced in the state, and thereby in urban areas also now and the active caseload that stood at 43,415 on April 23, a day after the ongoing partial lockdown began in the state, came down to 7,537 on Thursday evening.

Meanwhile, the Jharkhand government also began an intensive vaccination drive across the state on Friday for protecting people from the disease.

In a letter addressed to deputy commissioners of all the 24 districts of the state, additional chief secretary (health) Arun Kumar Singh directed them to conduct the interactive vaccination campaign on three days — Friday, Saturday and Sunday — every week during the month of June for vaccinating maximum eligible beneficiaries above 45 years.

Though the government admitted inadequate stock of vaccines in the state it wanted to vaccinate 1.5 lakh people on each of those days. They also declared that such beneficiaries may go to the venue get vaccinated after registering themselves on the spot.

“The vaccination programme is also being organised in rural areas and it will go simultaneously with survey work for two days — today and tomorrow,” informed Siddharth Tripathi, the nodal officer at the IEC wing of the health department.