Vijayawada Municipal Corporation deploys drones to spray disinfectant on Red Zone Areas

Vijayawada: Vijayawada Municipal Corporation has started using drones for spraying disinfectant, Sodium hypochlorite, at the New Government General Hospital (Covid 19) and the Red Zone areas in the city.

So far, the VMC declared four areas in Krishnalanka, Kothapeta, Moghalrajpuram and Gayathri Nagar as the Red zone areas where four positive cases were reported since March 17.

Three of them who came from abroad are undergoing treatment. All the four were admitted to the Covid-19 hospital. The New Government General Hospital has been designated as 1,000-bed Covid-19 hospital where coronavirus infected patients from Krishna, Guntur and West Godavari are treated.

Earlier, the Municipal Commissioner Prasanna Venkatesh and other officials inspected the drones. Each drone carries five litres of sodium hypochlorite. The drones spray on the buildings too in a short time. On the first day, spraying was carried out at the New GGH and whole building was sprayed. The drone is operated by remote control. So far, the VMC is conducting the spraying manually.

Hundreds of health workers are worried over their safety because these areas are declared as high-risk Red Zones.

Several thousand families are living in these four zones. Four areas are completely barricaded and people residing in these areas are not allowed to go out on vehicles. No vehicle is allowed to enter these areas.

The residents can go on foot only to other places. Medical and Health, Vijayawada Municipal Corporation, police and other departments are working in co-ordination to trace the foreign returnees and asking them to stay in isolation for 14 days. The officials are collecting the samples of some suspects, who have been facing symptoms of coronavirus and conducting tests. The Medical and Health Department are conducting Covid-19 tests at Siddhartha Medical college. As many as 800 tests can be conducted a day.