Bengaluru remains a hotbed of the pandemic with more than 2.5 lakh of positive cases and around 54,000 active cases. Although the BBMP issued the order to all of its zone officers on September 9, it took effect only in late September as officials were assembling mobile medical teams to visit industrial groups and apartment complexes for workers and residents to perform. Covid-19 screening tests.
While efforts are being made to curb the rapid spread of the pandemic by increasing testing, families appear to be preventing people with mild symptoms from coming forward and being tested for the virus out of fear of stigma.
Although the BBMP order said that all residents of apartment complexes should be screened for the presence of Covid-19, Commissioner N Manjunath Prasad clarified that they have given apartments an option to only test those who belong to high-risk groups. The test exercise has been delegated to the zonal teams. “Our intention is to stop the spread of the virus in labor-intensive factories,” added Prasad.
According to BBMP (health) special commissioner P Rajendra Cholan, all zones were implementing the order last week. “We have increased mobile teams to five per zone for the purpose and a static team for testing,” he added.
During a recent meeting with resident welfare associations, BBMP asked them to list the elderly and those with symptoms of SARI or ILI and to get tested. “In the apartments, we do not intend to test everyone, as there will be an increased workload in the labs and the waste of the test kits,” he said.
An order issued by a joint Yelahanka commissioner directs all apartments, factories and commercial establishments to carry out RT-PCR tests to prevent the pandemic from moving to the community spread stage. A dedicated test team has been formed to go to residential apartments, factories and commercial establishments “to protect the elderly, those with SARI and other comorbidities,” according to the order.
The president of the homeowners association of an apartment complex in Tatanagar on Kodigehalli said that BBMP officials told them that the Covid-19 test was mandatory. “Later, a doctor at a primary health center made a door-to-door visit and asked us to do a test at a kiosk created to collect swabs,” he added.
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