Coronavirus in India: Drones to carry out sanitzation and cleanliness drive! Municipal corporations across the country are of the opinion that drones are the perfect means to undertake the sanitization of the localities. To meet the requirements of Raipur Municipal Commissioner, drone manufacturer Garuda Aerospace on Saturday deployed eight drones and equally as many drone pilots via road from Chennai to Raipur, according to a report in IE. Raipur Municipal Commissioner Saurabh Kumar said that the city will start cleansing the areas which have witnessed confirmed cases of coronavirus, the report added. Places like Israel and Singapore are already undertaking this method and drones can reach places which are difficult to clean manually, the report further quoted Kumar as saying.
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Informing about the solution which the drones will use for sanitization, Kumar was quoted as saying that the liquid situation would be the World Health Organization (WHO)-approved combination of water, hydrogen peroxide and silver nitrate. He added that the police in the city have been monitoring the law and order situation for the past one and half years using drones.
The report also cited Garuda Aerospace founder Agnishwar Jayaprakash as saying that the optimal carriers of the virus are ground-level workers and they are most susceptible to get infected. This job is carried out by as many as 4 lakh Indians, putting them at risk. If the job can be done using drones, which cannot be infected, he asked why they shouldn’t be used.
Apart from Ranchi, Tamil Nadu has also launched a sanitization campaign, which will use 300 drones and 500 drone pilots to undertake the sanitization of metros, roads and hospitals across the state, the report quoted a release as saying. The report added that compared to on-ground workers, drones covered more areas, could work for longer at less risk and also reach more locations.
Meanwhile, Indore’s Municipal Commissioner Ameesh Singh also hired two drones two weeks ago from an agricultural company. According to the report, each of these two drones can cover an area of 5 acres in a 30-minute flight and can carry 60 litres for each flight. The report quoted Singh as saying that they had earlier attempted to cover the entire city, but had now narrowed down to three localities where 13 cases of COVID-19 were found.
Moreover, in Karnataka, the municipal corporation of Bengaluru (BBMP) included the drone technology to its sanitization programme two days ago, the report quoted mayor M Goutham Kumar as saying. The report added that the BBMP has seven drones and it is focusing on sanitizing hospital buildings and premises. The report further quoted Goutham as saying that the benefit in using drones is that even the top of the buildings can be sanitized. However, they do not have a lot of carrying capacity.
