Amid rise in coronavirus cases, 4,000 Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) staff and Mumbai Police personnel will be tested for COVID-19 every day from today.
According to a report by Mumbai Mirror, these civic employees and police personnel will be tested daily with the help of rapid antigen testing kits. Around 2,250 civic staff and more than 2,000 police personnel in Mumbai have tested positive for COVID-19. The virus has claimed the lives of 108 BMC employees and 52 city police personnel.
Additional municipal commissioner Suresh Kakani told the leading that the testing drive will cover all sanitation, health department and hospital staff. While the police personnel aged 45-55 will be tested first, later those aged below 45 with comorbidities will be covered. “Once these personnel are tested, we will cover the light arm division and other units,” Naval Bajaj, joint commissioner of police (administration) told the leading daily.
Suresh Kakani has earlier told news agency PTI that the COVID-19 situation "is in control" in Mumbai with the number of positive cases daily being reported below 1,500. Everyday, 6,000 to 7,000 tests are being done and most of the citizens are following the safety protocols, he added.
The city has been daily reporting less than 1,500 COVID-19 cases since the last many days. After the outbreak of COVID-19 in the city, the BMC focussed on slum pockets by tracing high risk contacts and sending them to quarantine centres, and if they tested positive, they were kept at isolation facilities, he said.
In the slum areas, the BMC took steps like house-to- house surveys for finding out symptomatic patients, setting up fever clinics and X-ray vans, taking help of local doctors and providing them all medical equipment and frequent sanitisation of common toilets, he said.
