Cuttack: Accelerating its combat against COVID-19 in days ahead following rapid spread of the disease in the district, the Cuttack administration emphasised on zero COVID-19 casualty and stepping up plasma collections, at a meeting held Friday evening.
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Addressing the district level review meeting, state Law, Drinking Water, Panchayati Raj, Housing and Urban Development Minister Pratap Jena insisted on zero COVID-19 casualties in the district.
Cuttack district nodal officer of blood plasma therapy and associate professor of SCB Medical College and Hospital (SCBMCH) Dr Smita Mohapatra elaborated on blood plasma collection status till date.
In totality, 529 donors from rural areas and 32 donors from the urban areas in Cuttack district have been shortlisted for plasma collection. About 116 units of plasma have been collected at SCB Plasma Bank from 58 donors in Cuttack district, of which 90 units have been sent to different COVID-19 hospitals for therapeutic treatment.
Notably, all voluntary donors shall undergo COVID-19 test and other ancillary tests on the very first outset.
As per norms of the state government, a donor should be in the age group of 20 to 50 years with minimum body weight of 55kg and should have recovered from COVID-19 infection not within less than four weeks before donation.
Norms for female donors will remain the same, excepting that a donor must not be an expectant mother or must not have given birth to a child recently.
Food Supplies and Consumer Welfare, Cooperation Minister Ranendra Pratap Swain, Sadar MLA Chandra Sarathi Behera, Salepur MLA Prashant Behera, Barabati MLA Muhammad Moquim, Choudwar MLA Souvik Biswal, Banki MLA Debi Ranjan Tripathy and ex-MLA Debasish Samantaray participated in the meeting.
The review meeting was chaired by Cuttack district Collector Bhabani Shankar Chayani. State Technical Spokesperson Dr Jayanta Panda, Cuttack civic body Commissioner Ananya Das, project director DRDA Abdul Akhtar including SCBMCH superintendent Dr Annada Prasad Patnaik and several others took part in the review meeting.
PNN