AP Govt to Scale up Vaccination Drive in 5 Districts

Amaravati: Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy held a review meeting on the prevailing COVID situation and decided to write a letter to Central Government seeking to reduce the gap for administering precautionary doses from the existing nine months to six months.

During the review meeting held at the camp office here on Monday, the Chief Minister also decided to suggest the  Central Government look into possibilities of reducing the gap for the precautionary dose to three-four months so that it would benefit frontline workers and those who provide emergency services and also avoid many people from being hospitalized.

The Chief Minister directed the officials to focus on scaling up vaccination in five districts (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 Vishakapatnam districts. He also reviewed the progress of construction works of new medical colleges.

The Chief Minister directed the officials to set up big hoardings in Village/ Ward Clinics and Government Hospitals displaying details of the Asrogyasri scheme. He said Village Clinics should be referral points for the Aarogyasri scheme, with detailed information on available treatment locations. The Chief Minister has reviewed the Standard Operating Procedures  (SOPs) prepared for the patient referral system under Aarogyasri and also on SOPs related to Arogyamitras in Network hospitals,  Village / Ward Secretariats, PHCs and medical officers for 104 and 108 services.

The Chief Minister said the medical services under the Asrogyasri scheme should be delivered efficiently and added that the mechanism of sending patients to concerned hospitals for treatment under the Arogyasri scheme should be strong. He said that the referral system should be such that 108, 104, PHCs, and doctors of other health centers should be part of it and provide better services to the people and added that Arogyamitras should play a crucial role in this regard. He said an app should be developed using advanced scientific technology for the coordination of all these services. The officials said the app would refer the patients to the nearest network hospital. The Chief Minister instructed the officials to focus on using Artificial Intelligence (AI) so that the system would become more efficient. and added that it would make the referral system more transparent. He said ANMs should follow up on the condition of the patients after they were discharged from Network hospitals.

The Chief Minister said 104 call centers should work efficiently and added that necessary steps should be taken to ensure treatment through telemedicine to the callers of 104 services. 

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 covid 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 in support of oxygen.  The Chief Minister instructed the officials to make arrangements for the 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 on people without symptoms and also to conduct tests on high-risk people in contact with positive patients.

Deputy Chief Minister ( Health) Alla Krishna Srinivas, Chief Secretary Sameer Sharma, Health Principal Secretary Anil Kumar Singhal, Health Principal Secretary ( Covid Management and Vaccination) Muddada Ravi Chandra, Finance Secretary N Gulzar, 104 Call Center In-charge A Babu, Health Special Secretary G S Naveen Kumar, Arogyasri CEO  V Vinay Chand, APMSIDC VC and MD Muralidhar Reddy, Health Director ( Drugs) Ravi Shankar and other officials were present.