Bhubaneswar: In order to encourage the people to come forward for testing of COVID-19, the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) in association with the Health and Family Welfare department started rapid antigen testing at nine local urban health centres on Tuesday and will add seven more centres on Wednesday.
Of the nine local health-care facilities, six are Urban Primary Health Centres (UPHCs) and three are Urban Community Health Centres (UCHCs). The UPHCs are at Niladri Vihar, Pokhariput, Saheed Nagar, Unit III, Unit-VIII and Unit IX, while the UCHCs where the tests for were carried out on Tuesday are UCHCs at Dumduma, Patia and Unit IV. Total 107 tests were done at the nine centres, according to a BMC release.
The seven urban health centres that will be added for the testing are UPHCs at IRC Village, Ghatikia, Kalpana Square, Brahmeshwar Patna, Kapilaprasad, Chandrasekharpur and UCHC at Municipality Hospital in Old Town.
The testing centres are open from 8 am to 2 pm and the tests are carried out free of cost by the civic authorities. BMC has appealed to the people to visit their nearest urban health centre and get the testing done. According to Health and Family Welfare department, the city has 22 UPHCs and four UCHCs.
The BMC conducted 2,010 and 2,285 tests on August 6 and 7 respectively. Three types of tests i.e. Swab tests (RT-PCR), Antigen and TrueNaat are done across the city every day. More than 75,000 tests were done in the city till Monday.
Also Read: Bhubaneswar Reports 109 New COVID-19 Cases & 134 Nore Recoveries