By Bizodisha Bureau, Bhubaneswar, August 13, 2020: The Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) in association with the Health and Family Welfare Department has started rapid antigen testing of local citizens at nine local urban health centres in a bid to attract people for Covid-19 testing.

The nine local health-care centres include six Urban Primary Health Centres (UPHCs) and three Urban Community Health Centres (UCHC).

While the UPHCs include Niladri Vihar, Pokhariput, Saheed Nagar, Unit III, Unit-VIII and Unit IX, Covid-19 tests were carried out at the UCHCs at Dumduma, Patia and Unit IV on Wednesday.

A total of 107 tests were done at the nine centres. The authorities plan to add seven more urban health centres for the testing from Thursday. The proposed seven new centres are UPHC IRC Village, Ghatikia, Kalpana Square, Brahmeshwar Patna, Kapilaprasad, Chandrasekharpur and Municipality Hospital in Old Town (UCHC).

The testing centres (UCHC and UPHC) will remain open from 8 am to 2 pm and the tests will be carried out free of cost, officials said.

While on August 6 and 7 BMC conducted 2,010 and 2,285 tests respectively, during last several days, the testing number has surpassed 1,700 to 1,800 range on an average. Three types of tests — Swab tests (RT-PCR), Antigen and TrueNaat are done every day at various centres across the city. Over 75,000 tests were conducted in the city till Tuesday.