Chittoor gears up to meet challenge of surging Covid cases

Tirupati/Chittoor: Chittoor district is geared up to meet any exigencies in view of the steep rise in Covid cases.

The district has been witnessing the increasing trend in daily cases for the past 10 days and reported 467 cases on Tuesday, the highest after July 18, 2021. This has taken the active cases to 1,549 now which was 238 on January 1.

With this the total positive cases in the district have crossed 2.50 lakh mark since March 2020. Tirupati continues to be reporting the highest number of cases since the beginning of January and on Tuesday it reported 146 cases followed by Chittoor with 54 and Madanapalle 16.

All the municipalities and corporations account for 237 cases while the rural areas have the remaining 230 cases with the highest being Tirupati rural with 55 cases.

Keeping in view the rising Covid cases, District Collector M Hari Narayanan reviewed the situation with Joint Collector (Development) C Sreedhar, DM&HO Dr U Sreehari, DCHS Dr P Saralamma and other officials at Chittoor on Tuesday.

A Covid care centre is already functioning at TTD's Vishnu Nivasam. The Collector directed to see that Padmavathi Nilayam and Srinivasam are also made Covid care centres by January 20.

Along with SVIMS State Covid hospital, Ruia Hospital, government hospitals in Chittoor and Madanapalle, 50 per cent beds of private hospitals should be earmarked for Covid patients. He said that the ongoing fever survey should be held in a foolproof manner with quality and if any patients with Covid symptoms are found, they should be home isolated immediately. The officials have to check the fever survey progress in villages by making at least 1,000 calls daily so that ANMs and ASHA workers conmplete their task correctly.

Exercising caution during the Covid-19 third wave, he told the officials to ensure 3,000 beds for Covid patients by January 20 as against the existing 1500. Steps should be taken to ensure that adequate staff are available at all hospitals and Covid care centres. Without any laxity all nodal officers have to plunge into action in their allocated duties.

The Collector said that the RT-PCR testing lab at Madanapalle government hospital has to be inaugurated immediately. Also, along with the 104 call centre in Chittoor, call centres should become available in all mandal headquarters. All the 23 oxygen tanks, D-type cylinders and concentrators need to be checked technically and kept ready for use. There are two oxygen filling agencies in Tirupati and one in Chittoor and they must be alerted and the tanks must be filled from time to time.

He asked the AP State medical infrastructure development corporation (APMSIDC) officials to identify the medicines and consumables required to treat Covid patients and keep the stocks ready.

Chittoor hospital superintendent Dr Arun Kumar, APMSIDC EE Dhananjaya Reddy and Dr Saravana Srinivas also attended the meeting.