The Central team from the All India Institute of Hygiene and Public Health, Kolkata, has asked the Kurnool district administration to change its strategy on COVID-19 containment and bring it under control as early as possible.
After a meeting here on Sunday with the frontline officials engaged in the fight against COVID-19, AIIH&PH Director Madhumita Dobe and institute professor Sanjay Kumar Sadhukhan while appreciating the efforts of the administration, asked the officials to find ways to increase the number of samples being tested, early tracing of primary and secondary contacts, isolation and quarantining of suspected cases.
COVID-19 cases showed a rise on Sunday after a couple of days of lull. Thirteen new cases took the total to 566 in the district. Twenty-eight patients were discharged taking the total number of the recovered to 267 leaving the active cases being treated in the hospitals at 283, according to District Collector G. Veerapandian.
Mr. Sadhukhan said lockdown could not be continued indefinitely and living with the coronavirus would become the new normal and wanted people to adopt all the precautionary measures as part of their daily life.
Upgrading of skills
Ms. Madhumita wanted the district administration to concentrate on improving the skills of the staff handling COVID patients and focus on getting more human resources prepared for a bigger challenge if needed in future.
The Collector said there were 20 surveillance teams for tracing of contacts and it was done meticulously identifying the primary and secondary contacts of all the foreign returned, Delhi returned and K.M. Hospital cases and collected 17,399 samples from them for testing in RT-PCR, CLIA, Rapid Test, and TrueNAT methods.
Joint Collector Ravi Pattanshetty, Municipal Commissioner D.K. Balaji and SP Fakkeerappa Kaginelli were among those present.
