Five COVID Care Centres to be made operational in Anantapur

Over 40% of affected persons have mild symptoms, says GGH Superintendent

A police officer inquiring about the health of his colleagues during a roll call at the Anantapur Rural Police Station as part of promoting COVID-appropriate behaviour, on Tuesday.

Five COVID Care Centres, one each in Revenue Division Headquarters, will be made operational from Wednesday to take care of the exponential increase in the number of COVID-affected persons in the district.

DMHO Y. Kameswara Prasad said that Additional DMHO C. Padmavathi was taking care of setting up these centres, where all amenities were being created for a short stay of the patients.

Right now, the three hospitals treating COVID cases in Anantapur city, Government General Hospital, Super Speciality Hospital and the Cancer Hospital, have 583 patients in total, out of which 150 require oxygen support or are on ventilator support in ICU, said Anantapur GGH Superintendent K.S.S. Venkateswara Rao.

“About 40% of these patients have very mild symptoms and need to be taken care of in a COVID Care Centre. But as there were closed till now, and as many hesitate to isolate at home, we used to see a heavy inflow of in-patients at GGH,” the superintendent said.

Meanwhile, Kurnool district recorded 758 new infections taking the active caseload to 4,243, while Anantapur registered 275 new cases pushing up the number of active cases to 2,225.

The Anantapur police, which has been relentlessly highlighting the need for wearing masks and maintaining social distance for the past one month, have begun taking stringent measures to protect the health of their own personnel deployed on the field. Superintendent of Police Y. Satya Yesu Babu made calls to many police stations on Tuesday and enquired about the health of personnel there.

They have introduced thermal checking, use of sanitisers before entering the police station.