The medical and health department of Andhra Pradesh has launched a mobile application, Covid Pharma, to keep track of people purchasing medicines over-the-counter (OTC) from medical stores for cough, cold and fever.
Using the app, pharmacies will have to take down details of persons and their mobile numbers, who are making OTC purchases of medicines, including Paracetamol, for common ailments, and report that to the government.
In the prevailing scenario, this will help us easily trace persons with any kind of likely symptoms of coronavirus,” Katamaneni Baskar, commissioner of health, said in a statement. This also includes buying medicines with prescriptions. The medical shops association has consented to collect details of persons making such purchases and share those with the health department for better monitoring, he said.
The state reported 80 new Covid-19 cases in the last 24 hours, taking the overall tally to 1,177. Meanwhile, the state government has recruited 1,174 doctors on a temporary basis for a year to meet emergent requirements. Most of these doctors would be posted in the Covid-19 hotbed districts like Kurnool, Guntur, Krishna and Chittoor, Baskar said.
Chief minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy said YSR Telemedicine will continue on a permanent basis and village clinics will have great utility in times of health emergency. During a review meeting, Reddy said Andhra stands ahead of other states with an average of 1,147 tests per million, and has so far conducted 61,266 tests.
The positive rate of Covid-19 in the state is only 1.66% from total 61,266 tests conducted, which is way less than the country’s average (4.23%), as well as that of Maharashtra (7.16%) and Madhya Pradesh (7%).
According to KS Jawahar Reddy, special chief secretary, medical and health, officials are going to use nearly 1,900 pulse oximeters in Covid hospitals to help monitor oxygen levels of patients.
