Triage centres to come up in all five city corpn zones

Coimbatore: The district recorded 322 new cases of Covid-19 on Tuesday, taking the tally to 12,467.
At least 329 patients were cured and discharged from the facilities they were undergoing treatment in the day. The number of active Covid-19 cases in the district now stood at 3,132. The Covid-19 toll, meanwhile, shot up to 252, with the state including eight deaths that occurred in the district in its bulletin.
The city corporation is now in the process of opening triage centres in each of its five zones to ensure beds in hospitals and Covid care centres are assigned to only those patients who really require them.
The triage centres would be the first reporting and screening point for patients, who test positive and want either government treatment or home isolation. While the first triage centre will come up at Siddhapudur, officials are planning to set up another one at Codissia trade fair complex.
Work on the triage centre at Siddhapudur has already begun. Dr G Ramesh Kumar, deputy director of public health, said, “We will deploy five doctors from rural areas to manage these triages, which will be set up in each zone. We have already assigned a doctor for the Siddhapudur centre. We have requested for equipment such as computers. Once they arrive, we will start bringing patients to the centre.”
Once triage centres come up in all the zones, people who test positive for the virus from the city corporation limits would be asked to report at their respective centres. “Doctor there will check them and assign them a bed either in a Covid care centre or hospital, or recommend home treatment based on their age, comorbidity and symptoms. This way, we will get better data on number of patients under home treatment and bed availability, among others. Patients will not wrongly be assigned to any facilities.”
Meanwhile, city corporation commissioner Shravan Kumar Jatavath convened a Covid-19 review meeting and asked officials to increase testing of people with flu-like symptoms and contacts of positive cases. He also directed the staff to identify people who have returned to the district and categorize those above 50, those with comorbidities and those in congested areas. Shravan Kumar also inaugurated a mobile Covid-19 testing laboratory that operates out of a van.
The Kattoor police on Tuesday also registered a case against a store owner and manager under the Epidemic Diseases Act for allowing crowd to gather in the store.