AP gets set to deal with HMPV; health minister holds review meet

Health minister Satya Kumar Yadav held a meeting with the health special chief secretary Krishna Babu and other senior officials here on Monday to take stock of the present situation.

The expert committee set up at the meeting has one each microbiologist, paediatrician, pulmonologist and preventive medicine expert to guide the government.

The officials told the minister that HMPV is a rerouting seasonal disease and mild in nature. They advised procurement of procure uniplex kits to test the virus.

AP has 10 ICMR-accredited virology labs to test HMPV. As per the Centre’s suggestion, confirmatory tests for HMPV will be done at the National Institute of Virology, Pune. Supply of testing kits would be done to ICMR-recognised VRDL labs.

The minister suggested procuring HMPV kits from Germany to test 3,000 samples and asked the officials to procure more, based on need.

Upon a review of the required drugs for treatment of HMPV-related illness, the officials sought sufficient quantity of drugs and procurement of specialised drugs like Ribavirin locally till such stocks are supplied by APMSIDC.

Immuno-suppressant patients and those on immunoglobulins, infants and patients with chronic illness need to take proper care as the infection would be more severe among them, doctors said.

Meanwhile, all the government teaching and district hospitals have been asked to keep ready 20-bed isolation wards and install auto sanitizer-dispenser in all OP areas of these hospitals.

All hospitals have been advised to hold mock drills to ensure availability of uninterrupted oxygen supply, oxygen pipelines, liquid oxygen supply and PSA plants.

The heads of the health wings would closely monitor the case of severe acute respiratory infections and influenza like infection cases that are reported in government and private hospitals, and assess the trends keeping in view such cases in previous years. They would identify hotpots for further management.

The heads of the health department are advised to keep a close watch on the number of fever cases being reported.

The health authorities maintained that the magnitude of the virus spread at this stage was zero and hence there was no need for panic.

A general awareness has been advised and a call was made to the public to do hand wash for 20 seconds with soap, use mask and maintain hygiene.

During the review, the required essential stocks were as follows: 4.50 lakh N95 masks, 13.71 lakh triple layered masks and 3.52 lakh PPE kits. Instructions were given by the health minister to procure further stocks for the next three months for their supply to all government health facilities.