Secretariat employees undergoing screening test for coronavirusDrive follows

Secretariat employees undergoing screening test for coronavirusDrive follows 

one staff member, a Hyderabad returnee, testing positive

06/06/2020, STAFF REPORTER,

VIJAYAWADA

All the Secretariat employees are undergoing COVID-19 test with one of them testing positive for the virus five days ago. The government has made arrangements for the same.

While the employees working in Blocks 1, 2, and 3 had undergone the test, those working in Block 4 underwent the process on Friday.

In all, there are five blocks in the Secretariat, and the drive is expected to be completed in a day or two.

The exercise follows an appeal made by Secretariat Employees’ Association president K. Venkatrami Reddy to screen all the staff members as a precautionary measure. All the 2,500-odd employees (regular, contract and outsourcing) spread over the five blocks will be screened under the drive.

After an employee of the Agriculture Department tested positive on June 1, Blocks 3 and 4 were kept out of bounds for the employees and sanitised. The employees working in the department were asked to work from home.

The employee who had tested positive was among the other employees who returned to Amaravati from Hyderabad on May 27 by one of the specially arranged buses.

The State government, in a GO dated May 18, had made 100% attendance mandatory in all the government offices that were not located in the containment areas. However, pregnant women and employees with high-risk health conditions were permitted to work from home.