VIJAYAWADA:The third COVID-19 hospital set up at Nimra Institute of Medical Sciences at Ibrahimpatnam will start functioning from Monday, said Collector A Md Imtiaz. He held a meeting with officials at his camp office here on Saturday to review the status of sample collection and the number of coronavirus positive cases reported in Krishna district so far.
The Collector said that there was a spurt in corona cases in the district in recent weeks and instructions were given to the Health department to collect 3,000 samples a day, including 2,500 samples at Virus Research and Diagnostic Laboratories (VRDLs) and 500 TrueNat samples.
Health teams should focus on testing vegetable vendors, shopkeepers, health workers and sanitation staff to identify the Severe Acute Respiratory Infection (SARI) and fever cases in the district. "So far, the health teams have collected more than 60,000 samples in the district. Testing more number of samples will help flatten the virus curve."
Elaborating further, he said that the Health department was also instructed to focus on identifying vulnerable people and collecting samples from them. The government had given permission to Apollo Diagnostics to collect samples and submit test reports on time.
Steps are being taken for home isolation of people of above 50 years, who are not having any health complications like blood pressure and diabetes, rather than shifting them to quarantine centres and their samples will be collected a week later, he said.