The results of surveillance tests undertaken across the city have shown that there is no community spread of COVID-19, health officials said on Thursday.
Addressing a press conference, Prashant Kumar Panda, Health Secretary, said tests conducted on randomly drawn samples from various city locations showed no signs of the virus. “This instils confidence that Puducherry, which currently has only three active COVID-19 patients recovering at the Indira Gandhi Medical College & Research Institute (IGMCRI) hospital, remains in Stage-1 of transmission,” he said. “Our RT-PCR testing has been very good. Till date, we have tested 1,473 patients out of which 1,354 have returned negative results for the coronavirus,” he said. The results are awaited for the remaining samples.
At present, 34 patients are in isolation facilities and 2,451 persons under quarantine.
The Health Secretary, who carried out an inspection of Health and Wellness Centres along with S. Mohan Kumar, Director of Health to evaluate their functioning, adherence to social distancing and drug availability, said the situation was found to be satisfactory on all counts. In door-to-door visits undertaken through HWCs, over 2.60 lakh households had been covered resulting in some form of screening for a net population of 9.91 lakh.
“We will be completing the remaining households to ensure coverage of the whole population in a couple of days,” Mr. Panda said.
Dr. Mohan Kumar said the Health Department was launching the next stage of testing that envisaged drawing random samples from asymptomatic cases to check for COVID-19. Besides, for patients with chronic conditions such as elevated blood pressure or diabetes, arrangements were made to provide medicines for a month or two to avoid frequent hospital visits, he added.
Regarding patients coming from Tamil Nadu, teams had been deployed at the borders to examine patients with regular illness and to allow only emergency patients to seek treatment at a hospital.
Testing centre at IGMCRI
Puducherry now has a second COVID-19 testing centre with the IGMCRI launching RT-PCR tests.
So far, Jipmer was the sole testing centre for COVID-19 in the region.
“This would increase testing capacity significantly. Moreover, as the IGMCRI was a dedicated COVID-19 treatment facility, this would help integrate diagnosis and treatment,” Dr. Mohan Kumar added.
