Health authorities in the State have launched a “containment plan” to prevent the spread of COVID-19, said Special Chief Secretary, Health, Medical and Family Welfare, K.S Jawahar Reddy.
In a video message relayed to the media, Dr. Reddy said the State had recorded its first positive case in Nellore. A student who had returned from Italy has been found to be positive for COVID-19. Both the preliminary tests and confirmatory tests done at SVIMS, Tirupati, had indicated that he had tested positive.
“We have begun a containment plan as per the protocol of Ministry of Health, Government of India. We have started cluster demarcation in the area where we have identified suspect cases. There are over 20,000 persons under active surveillance and 11 persons have been advised home isolation for a minimum period of 14 days. In the case related to Nellore, we have isolated the family members and also the family of domestic help in the house of infected person. We also have the travel history of those who had travelled to COVID-19 hotspot countries such as China and Italy and we are in touch with them. There is no need to panic,” said Dr. Jawahar Reddy.
The Health Department is closely monitoring the situation and has created social media groups in each district updating the condition of the suspected persons.
Thermal screening
Dr. Reddy said that thermal screening had begun in Visakhapatnam, Vijayawada, Tirupati, Kadapa airports and at Gangavaram, Kakinada, Krishnapatnam seaports. A control room with phone no 0866-2410978 had been set up which would function round the clock and 104 helpline has also been activated.
Two Corona testing labs — one at Vijayawada and the other at Tirupati — had been set up and another lab would be set up in Kakinada. So far, 56 isolation wards had been set up in government and in private hospitals, 428 special beds had been set up and 13 rapid response teams formed.
A 500-bed quarantine facility at Tirupati had also been activated and a 200-bed quarantine facility would be activated at Visakhapatnam.
“So far, we have sent 55 samples for testing to the National Institute of Virology, Pune, of which 47 were negative. We are waiting for the results of seven samples. We have set a target of screening 1.4 crore people through household survey, of which we covered 89,000 households, including 3,000 who had returned from foreign countries since February 10. We advise people to avoid relatives who have returned from foreign countries and to avoid spitting and coughing in public,” added Dr. JReddy.
