VIJAYAWADA: Three more Covid-19 sample collection centres, which will function 24x7, will come up at Bishop Azariah High School, Old Government General Hospital (GGH) and New GGH in the next couple of days, Joint Collector L Siva Shankar said. In a coordination meeting held with various department officials at his office here on Wednesday, Siva Shankar said a special control room will also be set up to provide suggestions for those having symptoms of the virus.
“We also came to know that several people who get their samples tested in private laboratories are being directly shifted to the Covid-19 care centre in Gudavalli. The control room will provide full fledged assistance to them through 104 call centres through a single window system,” he said. He said that a Covid-19 control room will be maintained at the Sub-Collector’s office.
A Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) has been issued for conducting sample testing at the GGH. The private laboratories should update the details of persons, who test positive to the government immediately. In case, the correlated points are between one to four, they should directly join the Covid-19 hospital and inform the 104 call centre. Those with virus symptoms should approach the triage centre at the NTR University along with their Aadhaar card, he informed.
Meanwhile, Collector A Md Imtiaz has convened a meeting with the traders associations at his camp office. He called on the traders to encourage online trading in a bid to restrict gatherings near the shops for containing spread of the virus. Besides that the traders should not allow customers without a face mask into their shops, the Collector added. Commissioner of Police B Sreenivasulu said that over 50,000 persons were penalised in the last 20 days for not wearing face masks in the Commissionerate limits. VMC Commissioner V Prasanna Venkatesh and other officials were also present.