The district administration of Visakhapatnam has been facing some flak in recent times for delay in declaring the results of COVID-19 tests. There have been instances when the commitment for declaring the results within 24 hours have gone beyond three or four days. Some are yet to receive their results even after five days. To overcome these glitches, the district administration is now adopting IT solutions to track test results.

The state of Andhra Pradesh is carrying out the maximum number of COVID-19 tests in the country, which at times becomes challenging to track and publish test results. Fluentgrid ERC (Epidemic Response Center Solution), integrated with the Smart City Operations Center at Visakhapatnam is helping the authorities to effectively track and improve response time for test results.

Fluentgrid Epidemic Response Center™  pioneered the 3TMEM approach to help the local, state and national authorities to effectively fight the COVID-19 pandemic. The 3TMEM approach involves:

• TRACE all the possible suspects, either those with symptoms or those who may have met corona positive people, with special focus on people with travel history to affected areas. Enable citizens to self-diagnose and report suspects.
• TEST the suspects to isolate corona positive people and quarantine the rest. Repeat tests on people during the quarantine. Post-quarantine, tag the people and their homes for observation.
• TREAT those under isolation until they test negative. Record treatment protocol and analyse the patient response. Use telemedicine to treat those under self-quarantine or home isolation. Move discharged people to quarantine and repeat tests to detect possible recurrence. Safely perform last rites to the deceased with a standard protocol.
• MOBILIZE medical and field staff to attend to emergencies, test suspects, move patients and suspects to isolation/quarantine centers, ensure availability of medical supplies, ensure food and other essential supplies during the lockdown and so on.
• ENGAGE with citizens through robocalls, text messaging, chatbots, mobile apps, public address systems, public LED displays and other channels to educate, motivate and even warn them to follow the instructions to prevent the crisis during lockdowns.
• MONITOR the situation across a given territory to tag and link all positive cases and suspects, identify clusters and hotspots, analyze trends, patterns and factors affecting the same, attend to citizen grievances and monitor KPIs that help assess the current stage of the epidemic to trigger relevant SOPs.

Fluentgrid implemented the advanced integrated command and control centers for Visakhapatnam, Lucknow, and Kochi as part of the Indian National Smart Cities Mission. We are working with these city administrators to fight the COVID-19 pandemic through technology enablement in the form of Epidemic Response Centers.

Developed two COVID Management System (CMS) portals for the district administration of Visakhapatnam; one caters to test results tracking and the other one is for handling the isolation care information. The staff from the testing centres and isolation committees are undergoing training in handling the portals.

The COVID Management System (CMS) consists of the modules as below:

1. Lab Module
2. Field Management
3. COVID Care Centers
4. Isolation Hospitals
5. Contact tracing
6. Quarantine Centers
7. Containment Zones
8. MIS

The data is captured at different stages of the COVID journey with each of the modules and pushed through the life cycle, thus ensuring there is no data loss and quick turnaround time on delivery of essential services. Also, the authorities have a handle on the situation through MIS and dashboards.

Media Coverage: The Hindu | The Hindu website