Mira Bhayander Municipal Commissioner Dr Vijay Rathod has started working on Maharashtra CM Uddhav Thackeray’s motto for fighting COVID-19 ‘Chase the Virus’. MBMC Chief has formed 417 teams which will go house to house and conduct testing with the antigen test kit for COVID-19 of the citizens with symptoms. The results will be available within 15 minutes. The team has started work from Tuesday. The government has provided four thousand kits and the corporation will buy 1 lakh 10 thousand kits. This five days survey will be conducted until July 18.
Ovala-Majiwada MLA Pratap Sarnaik and Mira-Bhayandar MLA Geeta Jain have demanded the test to be conducted through these antigen kits. So, immediately the corporation can chase the positive patients and start the treatment or quarantine them. The state government has provided 4,000 antigen test kits to the MBMC. On Tuesday, the corporation buys 10,000 kits and another 1 lakh kits will be available in a day or two. The cost of each kit is Rs 450 plus GST.
“The antigen test will be of great help in early detecting and isolating corona infected person. The Municipal Corporation is working hard to ‘chase the virus and cease the spread of the infection,” said Dr Rathod.
The Team constitute of
The door-to-door COVID-19 test has been started from Tuesday, July 14. Moreover, a special survey of suspected patients will be carried out with the help of health department employees, civic staff, teachers and Anganwadi workers. They have been trained on how to test with this kit. A total of 834 employees have been deployed for this purpose.
“Each team will visit at least 150 houses daily to check for symptoms. Symptoms related to COVID-19, such as low oxygen levels, difficulty in breathing, cough, fever, etc., will be checked. The survey will be conducted for five days and will cover about three lakhs houses. Apart from this, women admitted for delivery at Indira Gandhi Hospital in Mira Road will also be examined by the kit,” said Dr Rathod.
Deputy Commissioner ropes in corporator for the job
However, MBMC Deputy Commissioner has roped in local corporators to help in this COVID-19 screening and contact tracing drive. In a letter, Sambhaji Waghmare has appealed to corporators to convince locals to cooperate with civic staff during the drive.
Corporators can assist in the admission of COVID-19 patients, provide manpower and help set up mohalla clinics in their wards.
There are 105 new positive cases on Tuesday which adds to 5,851 COVID-19 cumulative cases in Mira Bhayandar. With 8 deaths, the cumulative deaths graph climbed to 208 in twin city.