Strategy to curb increasing covid cases chalked out by the BBMP
Wednesday, 7th October 2020
With no drop in the spiraling coronavirus cases, the administrative body of the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) has passed an order for the factory workers as well as the highly vulnerable public groups in the various apartment complexes to go for the Covid-19 test in order to contain the spreading of the deadly virus via undetected contacts.
The city of Bengaluru still remains a notable hotbed for this coronavirus pandemic with more than 2.5 lakh positive covid cases and nearly 54,000 active covid cases. Though the order came from the BBMP on the 9th of September, it came to effect only by the end of September. The order was sent to all the zonal officers and the delay took place as officials were engaged in setting up mobile medical care teams for visiting the various apartment complexes and industrial belts of the city to get the residents and the workers tested.
While all efforts and moves such as ramping up the testing etc are being undertaken to stop the virus from spreading rapidly, families seem to be stopping the family members with even the mildest symptoms to go for the test due to the fear of social stigma.
Though in its order, the BBMP said that all who are residing in the apartment complexes must be tested for Covid-19, the commissioner, Mr. N Manjunath Prasad said while clarifying that the residents of the apartment complexes have been given an option by them to get only the ones falling in the high-risk or vulnerable groups tested. The testing campaign has been assigned to the zonal teams. “Our intent is to curb the spread of virus in labour-intensive factories,” added Prasad.
According to P Rajendra Cholan, BBMP special commissioner (health) all zones of the city were implementing the BBMP order in the previous week. “We’ve increased mobile teams to five per zone for the purpose and one static team for testing,” added Mr. Cholan.
A meeting was recently held between the BBMP and the resident welfare associations and during that meeting BBMP had ordered them to prepare a list of the elderly people and of those who come with ILI or SARI symptoms and to get those groups tested. “In apartments, we do not intend to test everyone as there will be an increased workload on laboratories and wastage of test kits,” he stated.
An order that was issued by Yelahanka one joint commissioner directed all the factories, apartments, and also the commercial establishments to go for the RT-PCR tests in order to stop the covid pandemic from progressing into community-spreading. A dedicated covid testing team has been crafted to visit the various commercial establishments, factories and apartments “to safeguard the elderly, those with SARI and other comorbidities”, stated the order.
Source: Times of India