Telangana geared up to take care of Covid re-infections

Hyderabad: Not just Hong Kong even the Telangana Health department has declared that one or two re-infection cases were found in the State. According to Health Director Dr G Srinivasa Rao, symptoms were very mild in the reported re-infection cases and there was nothing to worry about. "In case of Hong Kong, it was seen that the re-infected person had a local strain when tested positive first time and the second time the strain reported was from Europe, which might have been exposed to the person during his travel there," said Dr Srinivasa Rao.

He stressed on wearing masks, maintaining physical distancing, and hand hygiene was the only way to prevent from getting infected or re-infected with the virus. This norm will have to be followed till a vaccine was available. The Health Director said that situation in Telangana was under control. Cases in GHMC have come down drastically with a spike of cases seen in tier-2 cities and districts. However, the department is hopeful of the decline of corona cases drastically by September end in the state, he said.

Testing has been ramped up big time with nearly 53,000 tests done in the last 24 hours with over 5 lakh tests done in August itself. Till now over 2,000 health care workers from the State have tested Covid positive.

As regards private hospitals issue, the department said that complaints about exorbitant charges have come down compared to earlier following department's intervention. Over 50 per cent of patients getting treated in private hospitals are from neighbouring states, the Director said.

Telangana State to do antibody surveillance in two weeks' time. Meanwhile, the Health department has procured 25,000 kits to find out the levels of antibodies developed against the virus among people. Already ICMR and NIN conducted first phase of Sero Surveillance two months ago in a few districts and GHMC limits and the second phase testing is due.

Telangana health officials stated that they are doing Sero Surveillance on their own independent of the ICMR survey and it will start in two weeks' time.