Medical Education Minister K. Sudhakar said on Wednesday that a government COVID-19 testing lab would start functioning in 10 days on the District Government Hospital premises here.
Chairing a review meeting of elected representatives and officers on COVID-19 here, Dr. Sudhakar said that it had become essential to ramp up the testing facilities as a large number of persons, who were natives of Udupi district, were returning from Maharashtra. The civil works of the government laboratory were in the final phase and testing equipment would be provided soon.
Already, a COVID-19 testing laboratory was functioning at the Kasturba Medical College (KMC) in Manipal. The KMC laboratory would soon get more equipment and was expected to test about 1,000 samples a day. The government laboratory would be testing about 350 samples a day. These laboratories should be able to take care of testing swabs in the district, he said.
Kundapur MLA Halady Srinivas Shetty suggested that instead of putting the returnees into institutional quarantine and then into home quarantine, the State government should send the returnees straight to home quarantine and their houses should be sealed.
Mr. Sudhakar said that Mr. Shetty’s suggestion would be discussed at the government level. He said that to deal with COVID-19 cases at the urban level, ward-level task forces would be set up. If the wards were large, then booth-level task forces would be set up. The gram panchayat-level task forces would deal with COVID-19 cases in the rural level.
The government would provide 2,000 Personal Protection Equipment (PPE) kits sought by the district. It was necessary to remove the stigma attached with COVID-19, he said.
District COVID-19 Nodal Officer Prashanth Bhat said that 8,642 persons, including 152 from foreign countries, had returned to the district in May. Of the 8,642 persons, 7,697 had returned from Maharashtra, he said.