Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation ramps up Covid testing to 4,500 a day

AHMEDABAD: Amid fears of a third wave of Covid 19 cases, the health department of the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) has scaled up its daily testing for Covid-19 from 2,500 to 4,500 per day starting from Friday.
A senior AMC official said the corporation is closely monitoring the situation and will further increase testing if the need arises. “We have already scaled up testing at entry points such as bus stands and railway stations. We are prepared to start setting up testing tents at various locations if the need arises.”
He said the focus of the civic body is on fast coverage of second doses of vaccines. “In five days including today, we administered as many as 60,000 vaccine doses. We are concerned as 9.3 lakh eligible people have not yet taken their second dose and some of them are overdue by over six weeks,” he said. An official said that on Friday, the civic body administered a total of 21,787 vaccine doses of which 18,554 were second doses.
He said that the civic body is taking all possible measures to avert a third wave of cases. “AMC has made its ‘no vaccine-no entry’ rule stricter on Friday. We have also started calling people who are overdue on their second dose. We are also tracing contacts of people who test positive. If despite all this we have to deal with another surge in the positivity rate, our hospitals are now better equipped to deal with such a situation,” the official said.