Andhra launches mobile Covid-19 sample collection centres, Aadhaar must

State nodal officer for Covid-19 Dr Arja Sreekanth said the state medical and health department has acquired 20 mobile sample collection centres, which would be increased by another 50 shortly to meet the growing demand for testing.

Hyderabad: As part of stepping up testing for Covid-19 in the wake of fast spreading of the virus, the Andhra Pradesh government has introduced mobile sample collection centres to collect the samples of people suffering from symptoms of the disease.
State nodal officer for Covid-19 Dr Arja Sreekanth said the state medical and health department has acquired 20 mobile sample collection centres, which would be increased by another 50 shortly to meet the growing demand for testing as the situation gets grimmer with the rising number of Covid-19 cases.
He said each mobile centre would have 10 counters, so that samples of 10 persons could be collected at a time. Those undergoing tests would have to furnish all their particulars, including mobile numbers, Aadhar numbers, addresses and their present health conditions.
“The sample collection will be done within 10 minutes and sent to the laboratories for testing. The test results would be sent to the people on their respective mobiles in the shortest possible time,” Sreekanth said.
Once the details of the person who gives his sample are uploaded in the system, they would be forwarded to the local Auxiliary Nurse Midwife (ANM), a health department worker, who would not only keep a surveillance on the movement of the person but also monitor his health status from time to time.
The mobile sample collection vans would be sent to various places like bus stands, railway stations, airports and inter-state borders so that samples from people coming from other states and countries would be collected.
“This will also help the authorities do contact tracing and prevent community spread of the virus,” the nodal officer said.
What is more, these mobile vans would be sent to all the containment zones to collect samples from people in the area.
“They don’t have to go to the laboratories for testing, since the sample collection is done within their colony,” he said.
Once the test results were declared, the health department authorities would monitor the people who test positive.
“Depending on the intensity of the disease and the co-morbid conditions, the authorities would decide on whether such patients should be sent to the hospital or the government quarantine centres or allow them to be home quarantined. If they want to be self-quarantined, the local ANM would regularly monitor their health status,” Sreekanth said.
Andhra Pradesh was among the top three states in the country in conducting the highest number of tests per million population.
As of Wednesday, the state has tested 10,77,733 samples, at the rate of 20,182 tests per million population.
In all, the state reported 22,259 positive cases for Covid-19 with a positivity rate of 2.07 per cent and 263 deaths with a mortality rate of 1.19 per cent. The national average for testing is 7551 per million, while the average positivity rate is 7.09 per cent and mortality rate is 2.78 per cent.