In the last one week, the district recorded over 5,000 COVID-19 positive cases. From 2,900 cases, the number crossed over 7,500, till Monday morning.
The sudden increase in positive cases is not only testing the capacity of the district administration to house them in required hospitals and COVID Care Centres (CCC), but also challenging their operational ability and transparency.
To iron out the issues, the district administration is using IT solutions and apart from creating a portal for the testing procedures, an exclusive portal for isolation has also been created. The portal is created by Visakhapatnam-based IT Solutions company Fluentgrid.
Speaking to The Hindu , district COVID Special Officer and Principal of Andhra Medical College P.V. Sudhakar said that this portal for isolation of patients is the first of its kind developed in the State. The moment a person tests positive, the information is transmitted from the testing portal. The Joint Collector and the GVMC Commissioner, who are logged in realtime, gets an alert with the name and address of the patient. This is immediately relayed to the ward or village secretariat and it is then up to them to act. The patient and primary contacts are traced and admitted to CCC or hospitals, as required, said Dr. Sudhakar.
Till the admit card is generated, it will be monitored by the Joint Collector and the GVMC Commissioner, as the hospitals and CCC are given login to the portal, he said.
Since the hospital and CCC are given login, the daily updates will be uploaded into the portal.
Once the patient is discharged, the focus shifts to the ANM and ASHA workers, who are supposed to monitor the one week home quarantine. There is a separate module in the portal for home quarantine and updated realtime, said Dr. Sudhakar. According to him, the portals are likely to go operational from this week.
