AP Govt to Soon Cover Black Fungus Cases Under Arogyasri

Amaravati, May 17: Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy held a review meeting on the prevailing COVID situation and vaccination and directed the officials to extend the curfew till May end.

During the meeting held at the camp office here on Monday, the Chief Minister said curfew should be extended to a minimum of four weeks to contain the situation and it has been only 10 days since they imposed curfew.  He said the guidelines will be the same for the extended curfew and the timings of curfew would be from 12 PM to 6 AM.  He directed the officials to ensure covid cases are not increased in rural areas added to utilize the services of Volunteers, Asha Workers, and Secretariat staff effectively to contain COVID.

The Chief Minister said to conduct covid tests to the people identified with symptoms during Fever Survey and to provide better medical facilities and medicine to the people tested positive. He said to focus on developing infrastructure facilities in Covid Care Centers. The officials informed the Chief Minister that there are chances of Black Fungus infection in diabetic and people who use excessive steroids and added that they have identified nine Black Fungus cases across the state.

The Chief Minister directed the officials to bring Black Fungus under Aarogyasri Scheme and prepare a protocol to identify Black Fungus at an early stage. He said to prepare a protocol to provide immediate treatment to people affected with Black Fungus under Aarogyasri and to identify some notified hospitals for its treatment.

The Chief Minister directed the officials to prepare an action plan to take measures to help the children who lost their parents due to the COVID pandemic.  He asked the officials to think about depositing a certain amount of money in the name of orphans in the banks so that the monthly interest will be used to fulfill basic needs.

Bed facilities

The officials informed the Chief Minister that there are 47,825 beds in 625 Covid care hospitals across the state, of which 38,492 beds are occupied and 25,539 of them are being treated under Aarogyasri. There are 6,576 ICU beds, 23,463 non-ICU oxygen beds, 17,246 non-ICU non-oxygen beds, and 3,467 ventilators in Covid hospitals. They said 17,417 of 52,471 beds in 115 Covid care centers were occupied.

Oxygen Supply

The officials said 590 MT per day oxygen is allotted to the state and the demand including all Government and Private hospitals is 590 MT to 610MT. In this regard, the officials said they have requested Central Government to allot an oxygen express with 80 MT capacity every day from Jamnagar and also requested Karnataka Government to supply at least 130 MT of oxygen from Bellary. They said eight ISO containers have reached the state while another two yet to come.

Masks - Injections

The officials said 7,32,542 N-95 masks, 7,55,395 PPE Kits, 44,11,353 surgical masks, and 23,383 Remdesivir injections are available in the state while another 8 lakh injections were ordered from Mylan and 50,000 injections from Reddy's laboratories.

COVID Vaccines

The officials informed the Chief Minister that a total of 75,99,960 vaccine doses were received from the center, of which 62,60,400 doses are of Covishield and 3,39,560 are Covaxin.  As of 15th of this month, the state had been allotted 6,90,360 doses of Covishield vaccines while the state has procured   8,90,360 doses, more than the allotted, they said. They said only 1,25,000 doses of Covaxin are supplied to the state while 2,27,490 doses were allotted.

Deputy Chief Minister Alla Krishna Srinivas, Chief Secretary Adityanath Das, DGP Goutam Sawang, COVID Command and control chairman Dr. KS Jawahar Reddy, Health Principal Secretary Anil Kumar Singhal, COVID taskforce committee chairman MT Krishna Babu, Health Secretary (Covid Management and Vaccination)  M Ravi Chandra, 104 call center in-charge A Babu, Aarogyasri CEO Dr. A Mallikarjuna, APMSIDC VC and MD V Vijayarama Raju, Health Commissioner Katamaneni Bhaskar, and other senior officials were present in the meeting.