Puducherry to engage private medical practitioners to identify Covid-19 patients

PUDUCHERRY: Observing that patients with various ailments throng in large numbers at the private medical practitioners’ clinics without adhering to social distancing norms, the Puducherry administration has decided to engage the practitioners to identify Covid-19 patients.
Relief and rehabilitation commissioner A Anbarasu, while participating at a review meeting hosted by lieutenant governor Kiran Bedi via video-conferencing, said the administration has proposed to direct the private medical practitioners to furnish daily reports on their patients with information on their body temperature, oxygen level and pulse rate among others.
He said the administration has proposed to engage college students, volunteers of Nehru Yuva Kendra and NSS and others for Covid-19 infection surveillance work to reduce the work burden on field-level health workers as suggested by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR)-National Institute of Epidemiology (NIE) team of scientists. The volunteers would be duly remunerated, he said.
He said the Vector Control Research Centre (VCRC), which performed 75 Covid-19 tests per day, has scaled up the number of tests to 270 per day. "Now VCRC has proposed to double the number of tests to 540 per day," Anbarasu said.
Bedi regretted that the poorly sealed containment zones continue to be the breeding ground for Covid-19 in the Union territory. She insisted on evolving a robust system to ensure strict perimeter control of containment zones to prevent unnecessary movement of people in and out of the zones.
The territory tested more than 2,000 samples for the third consecutive day on Thursday. Of the 2,264 samples tested on Thursday, 452 returned positive. The positive rate of the samples tested on Thursday stood at 20%, which is higher than the national average.
Puducherry headquarters reported the maximum number of positive cases on Thursday with 288 followed by Karaikal (123), Yanam (38) and Mahe (3).
Presently, there are 4,794 active cases in the territory of which 3,105 (64.8%) of the patients are under home isolation and treatment.
Six patients, including a woman, died of Covid-19 taking the death toll to 353. The fatality rate of infection in the territory is 1.9%, which is higher than the national average.
The territory has so far reported 18,536 Covid-19 cases of which 13,389 patients recovered and were discharged from various facilities. The recovery rate is 72.2%, which is less than the national average.
Healthcare authorities have sent 90,643 swab samples for testing of which 69,541 samples tested negative.