Even as the battle against the dreaded COVID-19 continues, the doubling rate of the cases is causing concern in Guntur district which has recorded a high number of cases. The district now stands third in the State after Kurnool and Anantapur.
While the State’s average doubling time is 11.3 days, in Guntur doubling rate stands at 10 days.
In case, there is no improvement in the situation, special attention will be paid to social distancing, within the cluster, quarantine jumping, lack of proper clinical management practices, lack of protective gear by health care workers if most of them are being found positive.
The Guntur district has 5,486 positive cases and of them 2,357 are active. On a positive note, the number of recoveries has gone up significantly. The ratio of active cases to confirmed cases stands at 0.4296.
It is in testing parameters, the district seemed to be lagging with the testing ratio of 2.42 of the total population. The lack of proper testing infrastructure is forcing many to come to Government General Hospital and Infectious Diseases Hospital, Gorantla. Braving rain, many are standing in long queues in front of sole RT-PCR lab at the super specialty block. With many health workers in frontline testing positive, the stress on the largest teaching hospital is visible.
200 samples per day
“We can handle just 200 samples per day, while more than 500 people are queuing up. We are doing tests round the clock and have just a single counter, to register the details of patients, track their sample ID,” said a health worker.
The Rapid Antigen testing kits are not to be seen in the public space and the mobile testing vans are too in short supply and as a result, most of the people are forced to come to GGH, which is the largest referral hospital and has an out patient load of more than 3,000 daily.
“We are braving the risk of infection at GGH, and will be happy if the mobile sample collection is done near our households,” says Praveen, a 42- year-old employee.
