The Andhra Prdesh State Road Transport Corporation (APSRTC) is not in a position to operate its entire fleet of buses in view of the prevailing COVID-19 pandemic that has necessitated travel restrictions to contain the virus.
The corporation, however, has joined the fight against COVID-19 by deploying its buses for rehabilitation works and also by converting some of them into mobile rythu bazaars that have been taking vegetables and other essentials to the doorstep of the residents living in containment zones.
Now, the corporation authorities plan to refashion 53 of their high-end air conditioned buses into mobile medical labs that will collect swab samples of people by reaching out to them in far flung areas.
As part of intensifying the battle against COVID-19, the government plans to use these ‘mobile labs’, christened as ‘Sanjivani’, to penetrate deep into the rural areas and reach out to people at the grass-root level to conduct COVID-19 tests.
“Each district will get four such mobile labs to conduct swab tests in their respective areas,” said a top official of the APSRTC. A prototype of ‘Sanjivani’ currently stands at the Pandit Nehru Bus Station. Since not all people can visit the testing labs for COVID-19 testing, the mobile labs will go to people to collect swab tests.
In the new model of the bus, the passenger seats have made way for doctors’ chairs and stools fitted to the surface of the vehicle.
Social distancing norm
The glass in the windowpanes has been replaced with acrylic sheets which have holes big enough for doctors and the medical staff inside the vehicle to put their hands through them and reach the patient standing outside. “The doctors or the medical staff will be seated on the chairs inside the vehicle and collect swab samples through these holes from people standing on a high platform outside. The sample collection will happen without the two sides coming face-to-face, thus adhering to the social distancing norm,” said G. Srikanth, CEO of Amba Coach Builders, which is re-modelling the vehicles.
Each of the mobile labs will have two computers which will capture online data of the swabs collected, he explained, informing that it may take a fortnight for the company to re-design the remaining 52 vehicles.
