Mangaluru, Mar 24: Dakshina Kannada District Health Officer (DHO) Dr Ramachandra Bairy on Wednesday said that the Health Department is putting emphasis on vaccinating the elderly population and those with co-morbidities in the new Covid-19 clusters across the district.
“People above 60 years and those between 45-59 years with co-morbidities residing near the newly identified Covid-19 clusters will be eligible for Covid vaccination. They need to get the first vaccine dose immediately to develop antibodies and in turn, reduce the mortality rate,” he added.
Speaking to the media here on Wednesday, Mr Bairy said that the vaccines are administered free of charge in 66 Primary Health Centres, 12 urban health centres, six community health centres, four taluk hospitals and district hospitals.
More clusters are being formed in the district, especially on college campuses. Meanwhile, 10 students from Mangalore University had tested positive during the past few days.
Similarly, one more nursing college on Falnir Road has reported more than 10 cases and measures have been initiated to seal down the campus. The department is mulling on declaring the blocks where students had tested positive as containment zones, the DHO said.
He said that steps had been initiated to test the swabs of those arriving from Maharashtra, Punjab, Chandigarh and from foreign countries without RT-PCR Covid negative certificate at the Airport.
We could not strictly enforce RT-PCR negative certificates from the travellers in trains as TTE were asked to collect certificates while examining the tickets, which is a challenging task. The buses arriving from Mumbai are checked at Uttara Kannada and Belagavi for Covid-19 negative report,” he added.
The DHO clarified that the students from Kerala attending colleges in Mangaluru are not stopped at Talapady outpost for checking negative certificates. Principals have been asked to make arrangements for tests in schools/colleges.
In fact, there is no accurate data on the number of students from Kerala and other parts of the state studying in the district.
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