Odisha: Nine Urban Health Centres begin COVID-19 testing, seven more to start today

In order to encourage people to step forward in large numbers for COVID-19 testing, the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) in association with the Health and Family Welfare Department has started rapid antigen testing of local citizens at nine local urban health centres.

Of the nine local health-care facilities, six are Urban Primary Health Centres (UPHCs) and three are Urban Community Health Centres (UCHCs)While the UPHCs include Niladri Vihar, Pokhariput, Saheed Nagar, Unit III, Unit-VIII and Unit IX, COVID-19 tests were carried out at the UCHCs at Dumduma, Patia and Unit IV on Wednesday. A total of 107 tests were done at the nine centres. It is learnt that seven urban health centres will be added for the testing from Thursday. The seven new centres are -- UPHC IRC Village, Ghatikia, Kalpana Square, Brahmeshwar Patna, Kapilaprasad, Chandrasekharpur and Municipality Hospital in Old Town (UCHC).COVID-19 testing at the UCHCs and UPHCs is necessitated to augment the testing facilities as the civic body has taken up the fight against the pandemic with the active support of the community.While the testing centres (UCHC and UPHC) are open from 8 am to 2 pm, the tests are being carried out free of cost by the civic authorities. BMC has appealed citizens to come to their nearest urban health centres (UPHC/UCHC) and get the testing done free of cost for COVID-19.

According to the Health and Family Welfare Department, the city has 22 UPHCs and four UPHCs .

While on August 6 and 7 BMC conducted 2,010 and 2,285 tests respectively, during last several days, the testing number has surpassed 1,700 to 1,800 range on an average. Three types of tests -- Swab tests (RT-PCR), Antigen and TrueNaat are done every day at various centres across the city. Over 75,000 tests were conducted in the city till Tuesday.

( With inputs from ANI )