Technology is both a boon and a bane and in these testing times when India and so many other countries are battling coronavirus, it has proved to be a boon. The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) on Tuesday took up massive sanitization drive in central parts of Bengaluru using drones, in order to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and disinfecting the public places across Bengaluru as a precautionary measure.
The area especially around the Krishna Rajendra Market (KR Market) area was sanitised. The civic body hired Drones to spray the disinfectant around the area where positive COVID-19 cases were reported in the city.
The sanitisation drive was flagged off by Mayor M Goutham Kumar and he added that the main aim of doing this was to contain and prevent the spread across the 198 wards of the city. The Mayor said, "Our personnel will be spraying Sodium hypochlorite solution as a disinfectant around public places in the interest of public health and safety. This is one of the several measures that we have taken to prevent the outbreak of any epidemic in Bengaluru."
Drones to spray disinfectants around the houses of people under quarantine
Sodium Hypochlorite solution is said to be the major constituent of disinfectant. He further stated that the drones will especially be used to spray disinfectants around the houses of people who are under quarantine in order to sanitise the area. A senior Police official said that soon the ward-wise distribution of Drones for spraying of disinfectant will be decided.
The BBMP personnel sprayed disinfectant solution by carrying it on a tractor at the ward level initially. For maximising the benefit of the drive, tractors that have a capacity of 6000 litres are being used, with each vehicle hosting 10 spraying machines.
Other cities adopt drone sanitisation
In a similar move; a startup in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, has put technology to use to contain the coronavirus spread and also bring down the risk of sanitation workers getting exposed to deadly COVID-19. The first drone was sent out by the Tamil Nadu Government on March 23 for disinfecting Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital in Chennai. A Chennai-based drone company is also helping tackle the scourge in Raipur in Chhattisgarh.
