The Medical and Health Department of Andhra Pradesh on Saturday launched 'COVID Pharma', a mobile application to keep a track of people purchasing medicines over-the-counter (OTC) for cough, cold and fever from medical stores across the state.
Using the App, the respective pharmacies will have to take down details of persons, including their mobile number, making OTC purchases of medicines for such common ailments and report it to the government.
"In the prevailing scenario, this will help us in easily tracing persons with any likely symptoms of coronavirus," Commissioner of Health Katamaneni Baskar said.
Even those buying those medicines with a prescription should be reported. The medical shops association has consented to collect details of persons making such purchases and share it with the health department for better monitoring, he said.
Meanwhile, the state government recruited 1,174 doctors on a temporary basis for a year to meet the emergent requirements in view of the prevailing coronavirus pandemic.
Most of these doctors would be posted in the COVID-19 hotbed districts like Kurnool, Guntur, Krishna and Chittoor, Baskar said.
"We have received over 1,800 applications for these posts and we have selected 1,174 from them," he added.
Last week, the neighbouring Telangana government had issued similar instructions to all municipal commissioners and additional collectors of districts to ensure that medical shops and pharmacists collect phone numbers of customers who buy medicines for fever, cough and cold.
"It is imperative that in a proactive manner we follow up on these cases which are having fever and other such symptoms which might be similar to those of coronavirus. We should be able to contact these patients and get a test conducted depending upon the symptoms," a memo by Telangana Principal Secretary-Municipal Administration and Urban Development Arvind Kumar said.
Meanwhile, frontline workers including doctors were among the fresh cases of COVID-19 reported from Andhra Pradesh on Saturday, as the overall number reached 1,016. Two fatalities were reported, taking the death toll to 31.
In Kurnool, two doctors working in the government general hospital and a police sub-inspector (SI) in Vijayawada city tested positive for the deadly virus, official sources said. Further, in Vijayawada, a police sub-inspector and 60 personnel were placed under quarantine.