Essential commodities required for the lockdown period are available in the district

Ongole: The Prakasam district collector Dr. Pola Bhaskara organized a review meeting on the available stock of commodities in the district with the business owners, merchants and traders associations in Ongole on Wednesday evening and announced that the administration is making sure that there will be no shortage of essential commodities required by the public.

The collector announced that in view of the lockdown is extended up to April 14, the administration is making arrangements to see all essential commodities like rice, dal, vegetables, fruits, milk, etc along with the drugs and medicines are available to the public. He said that they are making each mandal as three clusters and arranging vegetable and grocery shops in the playgrounds of the schools in each cluster and making arrangements for the public to maintain social distance while purchasing. He said that similar arrangements are being made at malls and other supermarkets in the district.

Bhaskara said that the surveillance teams have identified 895 people coming to the district from other places, including the 362 people in the list sent by the union government. He said that they have sent 12 samples for the Coronavirus test and received the negative results for 8 cases and the result is waiting for 3 cases. The positive case, which is being treated in RIMS Ongole is bettering day by day and has no symptoms now. He said that the patient will be discharged if the result of the test to be conducted on March 29 comes negative.

He said that they have made the 90 PHCs into 7 segments with one district level officer, one medical department officer, and a rapid response team to take a decision on the suspects. He said that as part of the containment control program of the Coronavirus in the district, they are increasing the five quarantine centers at Ongole, Maddipadu, Singarayakonda, Markapuram and Addanki to serve each assembly constituency with 100 beds capacity each. He said that they are already ready with isolation centers in five government hospitals and four private hospitals in the district. He advised the public to keep themselves at home as there is no vaccine available for the disease yet.

The joint collector S Shanmohan, AJC K Narendra Prasad, DRO V Venkata Subbaiah, additional SP B Sarath Babu, DMHO Dr. K Padmavathi, DSO Venkateswarlu, DPO Narayana Reddy and others also participated in the program.