Bokaro plans to test 20k over 15 days in rapid antigen drive

Bokaro/Sindri: The Bokaro administration on Friday said it is gearing up to test 20,000 samples between August 22 and September 5.
Chas SDO Shashi Prakash Singh said the sampling will cover urban areas and panchayats to identify and break the chain of transmission. “There will be up to 2,000 tests a day,” Singh added.
Bokaro is one of the 16 districts in the state that is having low test per million (TPM) of Covid-19 compared to the state average. The district health department has also been asked to engage ANM’s and multi-purpose workers for sample-collection purposes.
Meanwhile, civil surgeon Dr A K Pathak said efforts are underway to increase beds for positive patients. Apart from 90 isolation beds at Bokaro General Hospital, two 100-bed-isolation centres are currently functional.
The Dhanbad district administration has also started working on adding 300 additional beds by creating new Covid-care wards on the PMCH campus. Dhanbad DC Uma Shankar Singh said: “The district administration has decided to develop the gynaecology, anaesthesia, ENT, eye and paediatrics department building into a 300-bedded Covid care centre and get it functional within a week.”
The designated Covid hospital at BCCL central hospital, Dhanbad sadar hospital and PMCH cath lab have 100 beds for Covid patients at present. Besides this, there are 200 beds at Nirsa polytechnic, 100 beds at zonal training centre of railways at Bhuli, 50 beds at BCCL regional hospital at Bhuli and 25 beds at Tata Jamadoba hospital that are working as Covid care centres in the district. After adding additional 300 beds at PMCH, the total number of beds available for corona patients would go up to 1,000.