Vaidyara Nade-Halliya Kade flagged off

Aims at weeding out Coronavirus from rural areas; Five teams for each taluk

Mysore/Mysuru: District in-Charge Minister S.T. Somashekar flagged off “Vaidyara Nade-Halliya Kade” (Doctors’ march towards villages), a programme launched by the State Government to weed out Corona pandemic from rural areas, at Hootagalli Circle on Hunsur Road here this morning. He waved the green flag for vehicles carrying doctors, data entry operators, lab technicians, ASHA workers and Police, who will visit villages that are having more number of infected persons and conduct test on them.

From today, these teams will carry on their work of conducting Rapid Antigen Test (RAT) on all asymptomatic and symptomatic patients in all taluks for the next seven days.

Speaking on the occasion, the Minister said this programme had been launched Statewide in order to check the spread of COVID in rural areas. Of late, number of Coronavirus positive cases from rural areas has surpassed the cases in city. Taking serious note of the same, the State Government headed by Chief Minister B.S. Yediyurappa, has decided to take up this campaign seriously to flush out the virus from taluks and hoblis. In Mysuru district, five teams each will be sent to all eight taluks which will visit villages that were having more number of infected patients and conduct RAT on them. In case they test positive, depending upon health condition, patients will be sent to Hospitals or Covid Care Centres. The final year MBBS students from Mysore Medical College and Research Institute have been roped in to this programme. Identification of symptomatic or asymptomatic patients was not difficult as ASHA workers during house-to-house survey have recorded the names of such patients along with details. With that list, it will be easy for the teams to conduct the necessary COVID test.

Somashekar said while the COVID positive cases were declining in city, it was increasing in taluks which was a matter of concern. In view of this, it had been decided to take up RAT extensively in rural areas in order to check the positivity and mortality rate.