In lockdown 4.0, a number of sectors including intra-district travel and domestic flights have opened up and train services are scheduled to begin from June 1. This throws up an immense challenge for the district administration and it has to balance the opening up with containing the spread of coronavirus.
Keeping the challenges and issues in mind, the district administration has devised a three-pronged strategy to counter it.
Speaking to The Hindu , District Collector V. Vinay Chand said the three focus areas would be testing, preparedness of hospitals and containment.
Testing
The administration is reverting to the earlier days of mass testing and nine categories such as foreign and domestic returnees, symptomatic primary contacts of positive patients, asymptomatic cases, symptomatic cases that comes to hospitals for check-ups, frontline and health workers, patients hospitalised with symptoms and those who come for emergency procedure, have been identified for testing. “This apart for the first time we will be extending our testing facilities to the periphery, as the idea is to decentralise testing,” said Mr. Vinay Chand.
As of now in Visakhapatnam there are two testing centres in the urban limits that includes the virology laboratory in Andhra Medical College and the Truenat laboratory at Government Hospital for Chest and Communicable Diseases and around six in the rural area hospitals such as in Narsipatnam, Paderu and others.
“Apart from the two in the GVMC limits, which caters to about five urban constituencies, we intend to have 10 more in each of the 10 rural and tribal constituencies to take the count to 12,” said the District Collector. The administration also has plan to scale up the testing from 1,000 per day to 2,000.
Anticipating that going forward lockdown norms and quarantine rules will be more relaxed and home quarantine will be the order of the day, the focus is on hospitalisation.
The district administration anticipates a huge flow of returnees by July- August and also a surge in critical and hyper critical cases. It is laying its emphasis on enhancing the hospital beds from the present 2,200 to 5,250.
By June 1, we hope to get the beds ready and even private hospitals will be roped in. They may declare the entire hospital as COVID hospital or allot a wing. The Isolation Committee is on the job and already 25 hospitals have been identified and six are functioning, he said.
According to him, of the 5,250, at least 2,000 beds will have oxygen supply and around 1,000 will have ventilator support or beds with three lines catering to oxygen, suction and pressure.
Containment
The denotification and notification of fresh containment zones will continue, as and when patients test negative and fresh cases from new areas are reported, but simultaneously testing and active surveillance will be scaled up. “Enhanced testing, active surveillance and IEC (Information, Education and Communication) campaign, is the strategy for containment zones. The State government has designed some IEC material, and it will be distributed to improve awareness,” he said.
As of now there are about 27 containment zones in the district.
