Bhubaneswar: The Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) conducted 2,285 tests for COVID-19 on Friday, far exceeding the official target of 1,400. For the last several days, the testing number has surpassed 1,800.
It was revealed at a review meeting, chaired by COVID Observer and Principal Secretary Women and Child Development department Anu Garg, on the steps taken by BMC against the COVID-19 pandemic. The COVID Observer urged the civic body for increasing awareness on the disease so that people would not panic and more will come forward for the tests.
Total tests at seven different centres across the city have gone up to 70,114 till Friday. While the swab tests (RT-PCR) were done on 61,523 persons, Antigen test was conducted on 7,344 persons and TrueNaat test on 1,247 persons. Capital Hospital topped the list with 56,814 tests, according to a BMC release.
The facilities where the tests are being conducted are AIIMS Bhubaneswar, AMRI, Sum Hospital, Apollo, Capital Hospital, inDNA and Shree Hospital. Proposal to include four Urban Community Health Centres is in the pipeline.
The BMC has engaged 14 teams for the test. While 10 mobile teams of the Capital Hospital are going to different places across Bhubaneswar to conduct tests, three teams remain there to manage the in-house requirements and one team goes with the mobile testing van. A single team of testing includes two to three teachers, two laboratory technicians, one data entry operator and one sanitation worker.
Meanwhile, the BMC has increased vehicle strength from 14 to 24 in order to minimise the waiting period for active cases to shift to the COVID Hospital or COVID Care Centres, said BMC Commissioner Prem Chandra Chaudhary while speaking to media persons.
He further said the cured rate in the city has gone up to 63.16 per cent with 2,360 patients cured out of 3,573 admitted till date. Similarly, in case of home isolation cases, the cured rate is 60.11 per cent with 327 cured out of 515.
On the health infrastructure, Chaudhary said the city has total 3,461 hospital beds including 115 ventilator facility in ICU and 218 total ICU and HDU (high dependency units).
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