Separate home isolation kits for adults, children and infants

By M.T. Yogesh Kumar

Mysore/Mysuru: The exercise to prepare thousands of COVID-19 home isolation kits for distribution among people with infection symptoms, even as the disease is running rampant in Mysuru, has turned the new District Office Complex at Siddartha Layout on Bannur Road into a beehive of activity.

Mysuru, which has been witnessing a daily spike since last week, has more patients in home isolation than in hospitals and COVID Care Centres. To help these patients, the District Administration is delivering home isolation kits to patients fighting the disease at their homes.

Teams of the Health Department, AYUSH Department and the Revenue Department are handling home isolation management. In particular, the medical staff, Anganwadi workers, taluk administrations and volunteers play an important role.

Yesterday, Mysuru reported an alarming highest single-day spike in COVID-19 cases with 4,601 testing positive. The previous highest was around 3,500 cases which was reported in the second wave last year.

As per the technical data released by the State COVID-19 Technical Advisory Committee (TAC), in Mysuru, the daily fresh infections will be on an average from 2,250 to 7,000 cases after Jan. 25.

As per the data, in Mysuru, there will be a 30 percent increase in positive cases from Jan. 25 (2,246 cases), 60 percent increase from Jan. 28 (4,561 cases) and 100 percent increase in positive cases from Feb. 2 (6,947 cases).

District Health Officer (DHO) Dr. K.H. Prasad told Star of Mysore that as the cases will spike, 98 percent of the patients are in home isolation and the administration is gearing up with over 14,000 home isolation kits. “Already, 11,000 kits have been distributed and today we will be ready with over 5,000 kits,” he added.

Some of the kits have been sponsored by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Karnataka Health Promotion Trust (KHPT) and Automotive Axles Ltd.

There are three types of home isolation kits — for adults that will consist of tablets, masks and sanitisers, for children it will be tonic-based medicines and for infants, the kits will have drop-based medication. Information, before the home isolation kits are handed over, are obtained by the War Room and the triaging centres.

Dedicated teams of doctors, AYUSH doctors, Health and Revenue Department officers are managing the home isolation kits distribution to Block Level Officers (BLOs) at the micro level. Each home isolation kit contains antibiotic/ antiviral, paracetamol, zinc, and multivitamin tablets and drops for children.

The administration has deployed teams for tele-consultancy and coordination with the patients as they are tested positive. The teams work from 9 am to 9 pm and ensure that patients in need of help are given home isolation kits.