The Calcutta Municipal Corporation has started collecting samples of persons showing symptoms of Covid-19 from some of the worst affected places in the city, deputy mayor Atin Ghosh said on Wednesday.

Ghosh said 200 samples were collected on Wednesday and the process would continue. The civic body, he said, does not want to wait for these people to go to hospital and get tested.

“On Wednesday, samples were collected from six of the worst-hit wards — 24, 27, 57, 65, 60 and 62,” said Ghosh, who also heads the health department of the civic body.

A senior CMC doctor said three medical technologists collected samples in the six wards.

The places from where the samples were collected included Tiljala Shibtala Lane, Canal South Road, Ladies Park off CIT Road, Haji Mohammad Mohsin Square off Rafi Ahmed Kidwai Road and Maniktala Bazar Lane and Nimtala Ghat Street. A source said a similar drive would be done in Muchibazar, near Ultadanga, on Thursday.

Till Tuesday, anyone who had symptoms of Covid-19 had to go to any of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR)-approved laboratories in the city to get tested. A prescription was needed for the test.

A CMC doctor said sample collection at the community level was a welcome step. Ever since the door-to-door surveillance was started in the slums about a month ago, the CMC surveillance team is coming across many people with symptoms of Covid-19.

But many of them were reluctant to visit any hospital to get tested, a doctor said. It was also not possible for the CMC to take so many people to testing centres.

“Collection of samples in the neighbourhood makes the process easier…. Surveillance will be meaningless if we cannot test suspected cases and know how much the infection has spread,” said a CMC doctor.

According to public health professionals, an effective measure against Covid-19 is to test and isolate positive persons to stop the spread of the infection. More than 750 cases have been reported in the city till Wednesday and the numbers are increasing steadily. “The majority of the new cases are from slums in north and central Calcutta. So, going into the community for tests was necessary,” said a CMC official.

Officials said there had been talks about installing kiosks in some ward health clinics, modelled on the ones used in South Korea.