Chief Secretary directs Collectors to ramp up COVID vaccinations and testing
Telangana: Hyderabad: April 6 ( HS) Chief Secretary, Somesh Kumar IAS today held a video conference with District Collectors and senior officers to review measures for management of COVID-19 pandemic in the state. In a video conference , Chief Secretary issued numerous instructions covering the entire scope of COVID management including testing, tracing, treating, vaccination and enforcement of COVID appropriate behaviour.
Chief Secretary directed Collectors to steeply increase and double the number of tests being done on a daily basis in order to cast the net wider and identify as many COVID positive persons as possible. He stated that this would help in early identification and isolation of positive cases which would be in turn help in controlling the spread of disease. Early identification would also enable early start of treatment which would reduce the probability of cases becoming serious he said.
Chief Secretary asked Collectors to ensure use of new testing app for meticulous contact tracing of every positive person and their subsequent testing also. In line with ICMR’s Testing Guidelines version 6 dated 4th September 2020, Collectors were asked to ensure that all symptomatic persons found negative in Rapid Antigen Tests were subjected to RTPCR tests also he said.
Chief Secretary stressed the importance of on-the-spot assessment and counselling of all COVID positive persons by doctors at the testing location itself. He also emphasised the need to hand over a kit of essential medicines to all persons found fit for home isolation. Further, persons in home isolation were to be monitored by home visits/tele-calling he added.
Chief Secretary directed Collectors to ramp up the pace of COVID vaccinations. With relaxation to vaccinate all persons above the age of 45 years irrespective of comorbidity, Government Covid Vaccination Centres (GCVCs) have been opened down to the PHC level increasing the number of GCVCs from 142 to over one thousand he said.
He asked Collectors to see to it that people were made aware of the locations of the GCVCs. Furthermore, Chief Secretary fixed minimum performance benchmarks for all GCVCs with a minimum of 100 for PHCs, 200 for Area Hospitals/Community Health Centres and 300 for District Hospitals/Government General Hospitals so as to ensure that daily vaccinations in GCVCs across the states exceeds 1.25 lakh a day from the present figure of 50,000. Area based approach to testing and vaccination he added.
Secretary Health and Family Welfare Rizvi, Secretary SC Development Rahul Bojja, Special Secretary Finance Ronald Rose, Director Drugs Control Administration Dr. Preeti Meena, Director Public Health Dr. Srinivas Rao and other officials were present.
