AP for cutting time for taking precautionary dose

Vijayawada/Visakhapatnam: Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy after a review meeting on Covid situation in the State, said they will write a letter to the Centre to reduce the time for precautionary dose from nine months to six months for those aged above 60 years.

AP reported 4108 cases in the last 24 hours till Monday morning with Visakhapatnam topping the districts with 1018 positive cases followed by 1004 in Chittoor.

During the review meeting held at the camp office near Vijayawada, the Chief Minister decided to suggest the Central Government to look into possibilities of reducing the gap for precautionary dose to three to four months so that it will benefit frontline workers and those providing emergency services and help many people avoid hospitalisation.

The officials informed the Chief Minister that they are ready to face any kind of situation in the wake of the increase of Covid cases and said they have prepared more beds compared to the second wave for treating patients and added that they have arranged 53,184 beds across the State. They said only 1,100 people were hospitalized out of 27,000 active cases and only 600 of them are with oxygen. The Chief Minister instructed the officials to make arrangements for availability of oxygen and medicines. The officials said the patients used to take 14 days to get discharged earlier and it was only seven days at present.

They said the State Government has set up one Covid care center in each constituency and arranged 28,000 beds in them. The officials informed that new ICMR guidelines stated not to conduct Covid tests to people without symptoms and also to conduct tests to high risk people in contacts of positive patients. The Chief Minister directed the officials to focus on scaling up vaccination in five districts in East Godavari, Guntur, YSR Kadapa, Vizianagaram and Srikakulam with the lowest second dose vaccination. He said vaccination to the age group of 15-18 years has been completed 100 percent in Nellore and West Godavari, and it was 90 percent in other five districts and 80 percent in other four districts and directed the officials to expedite the vaccination process in Vizianagaram and Visakhapatnam districts. He also reviewed the progress of construction works of new medical colleges.