In order to promote plasma donation by already-cured COVID-19 patients, the Andhra Pradesh government has decided to reward the plasma donors with cash incentives.

The state government is also taking steps to be transparent in the availability of beds and providing care to COVID-19 patients.

Andhra Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy announced that Rs 5000 will be given to each plasma donor who has recovered from the disease and helping others in getting cured. This decision came after a review meeting on COVID-19 remedial measures on Friday.

Reddy issued instructions to the officials to chalk out the standard operating procedures (SOPs) for better treatment facilities. Reddy also sought details of bed and helpdesk availability in the medical facilities identified for the treatment of COVID-19 patients in the districts.

The chief minister also ordered that the details should be displayed on the blackboard in all hospitals in a digitised format where possible.

10,167 new  COVID- 19 positive cases have been recorded, in Andhra Pradesh during the last 24 hours. 4618 persons have recovered and been discharged from various COVID hospitals in the State in the past 24 hrs.

A total of 1,30,557 COVID positive cases have been recorded in the state of which 69,252 are active and 60,024 persons have recovered. 1281 people have succumbed to COVID.

India achieved a remarkable feat today by performing more than six lakh tests of coronavirus samples in a single day. The Indian Council of Medical Research said that a record of 6,42588 tests were conducted by various laboratories in the last 24 hours. More than one crore 88 lakh tests have been conducted in the country so far.

Our correspondent reports that starting from less than 100 tests per day, a multiple fold increase in a few months was made possible by dedicated teams of research institutions, medical colleges, testing laboratories, Ministries, airlines and postal services. The government has created robust health infrastructure for effective management of the Covid-19 pandemic within a short span. The Central government in collaboration with the States and Union Territories’ government adopted the strategy of aggressive testing, tracking and treatment to deal with the coronavirus crisis. In January this year, there was only one testing laboratory for COVID-19 in India.

Now, 1331 government and private laboratory chains are conducting tests for coronavirus samples across the country. ICMR is continuously ramping up its testing capabilities by approving new laboratories, RT-PCR kits, True Nat Test, CBNAAT Test and rapid antigen test kits. However, in spite of these developments, access to testing still remains a huge challenge in a large country like India. To deal with this challenge, the Health Ministry and ICMR have asked the States and Union Territories to include additional testing methods to improve the availability of testing.

With Inputs from- www.odishabytes.com