NMC to start 6 walk-in testing centres to curb COVID-19 spread from today
   Date :03-Aug-2020

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Staff Reporter ;
 
Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) is rolling out walk-in COVID-19 testing centres for the citizens. From Monday onwards six centres, Pachpaoli Covid Care Centre, and five quarantine centres namely Raj Nagar, Ravi Bhawan, Law College, Vasantrao Naik Girls Hostel and RPTS started the tests that would enable timely detection of virus spread.
 
The city that prided itself during first half of year for controlling COVID-19 cases is spooked by sudden rise in positive cases and more worrying factor is the increasing fatality rate. Alternatively, NMC is also going for limited community testing at few places, one was recently held at Hanuman Nagar, and other one started in Jaripatka due to initiative of the local corporators. The new initiative to go for community testing would go long way in reaching out to the vast population. Since in fatality the time was identified as critical factor, most had co-morbidity and came late for treatment, and hence timely detection of the virus symptoms may help civic machinery in narrowing on the suspects.
 
Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) has received 8,500 Rapid Antigen Kits which helps in faster results. Senior civic officials had a long discussion after which decision on rolling out community testing centres was finalised by Additional Municipal Commissioner Ram Joshi and Chief Medical Officer Yogendra Sawai. Initially, 500 tests would be conducted on daily basis to be scaled-up to 2000 in near future.
 
Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) is going slow on starting community testing to avoid burdening the local labs that are swarmed with samples from other centres besides regular swabs from hospitals. The move by Government is part of its programme tracking, tracing, testing and treatment and finalised during the last meeting chaired by Dr Nitin Raut, Guardian Minister, at Divisional Commisisonerate. In the first step, persons with co-morbidity would be given preference for testing at community centres as they are most vulnerable to COVID-19.