VIJAYAWADA: The city considered as the State financial capital has become a hotspot for coronavirus. In all, 88 people have tested positive for the virus in Krishna district till Thursday. Of the total, 68 corona cases are in Vijayawada alone posing a serious challenge to the administration as it has to trace the persons with symptoms of Covid-19 and their contacts too.
In an interaction with TNIE, Krishna District Collector and VMC Special Officer A Md Imtiaz said the city is very densely populated and hence the number of positive cases is high. The official machinery is on high alert and the pandemic is being fought on multiple fronts. “Breaking the chain of virus in the city is a major task for the administration. Door delivery of essentials has been introduced to prevent people from venturing out of their houses during lockdown.
As many as 15 people in the city without any travel history and didn’t even have any contact with the persons returned from abroad or New Delhi, have tested positive for coronavirus,” he said. Explaining the preparedness of the district administration to combat Covid-19, Imtiaz said that New Government General Hospital (GGH) and Pinnamaneni Siddhartha General Hospital at Chinna Avutupalli were converted into Covid-19 hospitals. “We are conducting corona tests through swab collection, TrueNat machine and Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR).
Adequate equipment has been installed at Pinnamaneni Siddhartha General Hospital to intensify the sample tests and 11,000 rapid testing kits reached the district a couple of days ago. Health workers are instructed to collect the samples of 2,000 people per million to identify the spread of the virus in the community with special emphasis on 25 Red Zones spread across the district. Asked about the status of sample testing, the Collector said that most people in the city are asymptomatic, but that is not the criterion for testing. As many as 5,534 samples have been collected so far in the district.
Of the total, 88 people have tested positive and 3,892 negative. About 25 affected people have recovered completely. Seven persons died. Sample reports of 1,554 are awaited. Elaborating further, Imtiaz said of the total 88 cases, five cases are foreign returnees, 15 foreign returned contacts (FRCs), 20 Delhi returnees and 21 cases and Delhi returned contacts (DRCs). A Jharkhand returnee and persons returned from Punjab University and three of their contacts are also among those who tested positive, the Collector said.
When questioned about the lapses in the lockdown enforcement in the district, the Collector said that the police department has registered 4,000 cases and seized a large number of vehicles from violators. On the other hand, the district administration has deployed additional police force and drones are being used to identify the lockdown violators. “Staying at home and maintaining social distancing are the only ways to contain the spread of coronavirus. We have chalked out an action plan to trace the contacts of the persons who tested positive for the virus and shift them to 30 quarantine centres set up at various educational institutions across the district as a precautionary measure,” the Collector informed.