Vijayawada: Now, kin to get real-time updates

Vijayawada: The relatives of persons who were infected with Covid-19 are seen running around seeking information about the dear ones. Numerous cases of uncertainty surrounding the health status of a Covid-19 infected relative due to multiple reasons, tormenting citizens have come to light across the country.

The state government has put an end to this issue and thereby the trauma that citizens had to endure due to the same. The relative chosen by the patient will now be getting real-time updates on the status of the patient. At the time of admission, every patient is requested to provide the phone number of a close relative who could be informed about his/her status on a real-time basis.

Every time a doctor visits a patient, he/she would have to update the vitals and other necessary information related to the patient using a tech tool. Depending on the inputs, the software is programmed to reflect the status of the patient as either 'Stable' or 'Unstable', which is then sent to the relative of the patient as an SMS.

Andhra Pradesh is also the only state which is notifying every citizen who is tested at every stage of the process via SMS. The person being tested receives an SMS when the sample is collected, one when the sample reaches the lab and another which contains the result.

Speaking about the same, commissioner of health and family welfare Katamaneni Bhaskar said, "Attendants are not allowed to stay in the Covid ward as that could expose them to the infection. We do allow them to stay in the hospital premises but it becomes very difficult for anybody to handle.

So what we have done is, every day the health condition of the patient is captured by the duty doctor, who then enters the same into software which automatically sends alerts to the patient's relative. The same can also be checked on our website using an OTP which is sent to the number given by the patients at the time of admission.

The reason why only one relative chosen by the patients is allowed to access these details is because of privacy concerns as these are health records."