Vijayawada: Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy held Spandana programme through video conference with district collectors and SPs and discussed a wide range of issues including Covid here on Tuesday. Interacting with the officials, the Chief Minister asserted that vaccination was the only answer to Coronavirus.
The Chief Minister directed district collectors to be alert for a possible third wave of Covid-19 and said they should be ready with a district wise action plan by the end of August. He directed them to increase infrastructure facilities, biomedical equipment and oxygen beds as per the requirement, and complete paediatric care training to staff nurses.
The Chief Minister said the country had been manufacturing fewer vaccine doses than the actual requirement and the state government had been vaccinating people as per the allocations made by the Central government. He said the impact of Covid had been decreasing gradually and the positivity rate was reduced to 2.82 percent from 25 percent during the second wave.
The Chief Minister lauded the efforts of village secretariat staff, volunteers, Asha workers, doctors, ANMs and district collectors in containing the Covid-19 and said door-to-door fever survey was conducted 13 times and the people with symptoms were identified, tested and provided treatment. He congratulated them for putting efforts to decrease the mortality rate and containing the spread of the virus.
The Chief Minister said focused testing should be done through RTPCR tests by identifying people with symptoms and added that tests should be conducted to whoever asked for it. He said 104 services should be utilised effectively, fever surveys should be conducted regularly, masks and social distancing should be followed strictly. In view of the decreasing caseload, the number of hospitals and Covid care centres should be maintained, he said and added that Covid treatment was being provided at 302 hospitals and 123 Covid care centres at present.
The Chief Minister said the first dose of vaccine was administered to 1.53 crore people of the required seven core doses and added that the vaccine was administered to 75.89 percent of people above 45 years of age and it needed to reach 90 percent and then the vaccine should be administered to other priority sectors. He said priority should be given to teachers, pregnant women and students. The Chief Minister also directed the officials to pay special attention to vaccination to teachers as the schools were being reopened.
The Chief Minister said the state government had set the target to plant one crore saplings from August 15 to August 30 and directed the district collectors to take necessary measures. He said the tenders regarding procurement of plant saplings should be completed by August 5 and the remaining works should be expedited. He said sarpanches volunteers and secretariat staff in villages should be involved in the programme. He asked them to focus on providing water and protecting the sapling apart from planting it.
Deputy Chief Minister Alla Krishna Srinivas, panchayat raj and rural development minister Peddireddy Ramachandra Reddy, municipal administration and urban development minister Botsa Satyanarayana, chief secretary Adityanath Das, DGP Goutam Sawang, land administration chief commissioner Neerab Kumar Prasad, agriculture special chief secretary Poonam Malakondaiah, housing special chief secretary Ajay Jain, urban development and municipal administration special chief secretary Y. Srilakshmi, revenue principal secretary V Usha Rani, health principal secretary Anil Kumar Singhal, panchayat raj and rural development principal secretary Gopala Krishna Dwivedi, finance principal secretary shashi bhushan, disaster management commissioner K. Kannababu and other officials were present.
