India eyes 40,000 screening daily
New Delhi: In a major development, the Health Ministry, which was facing the heat of opposition leaders for an abysmal number of COVID-19 testing may soon start screening about 40,000 corona suspects in a day as rapid antibody diagnostic test kits would be available from Wednesday.
According to ICMR's senior official Raman Gangakhedkar, the test kits would be available from Wednesday onwards, which would be deployed in areas identified by the Health Ministry as per the testing protocols.
"The government has set a target to scan at least 1 lakh suspects of the virus through rapid antibody tests in a day. The kits would be primarily used to screen people residing in clusters, evacuation areas and those places where several numbers of suspects are living," another ICMR official said, adding that at present about 11,000 samples are being tested in a day for RT-PCR, which is a confirmatory diagnosis.
"The rapid antibody kits would be used in cluster areas to identify COVID-19 positive cases at a very fast speed. With this kit, about 40,000 tests could be conducted in a day," the official said.
Even though the total number of Coronavirus cases in India rose to 3,577, including 83 deaths, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) is firm on its previous stand that there was no evidence of COVID-19 being an airborne infection.
Commenting on the airborne transmission, ICMR's senior official Gangakhedkar said, "If COVID-19 was an airborne infection and not droplet infection then the whole family would get infected if a person is a Corona positive. Similarly, it applies to other patients and doctors in a hospital too."
"We must believe the evidence and not rumours. The COVID-19 virus spreads through droplets only," the ICMR official said.
Meanwhile, the Health Ministry has also held Islamic missionary group Tablighi Jamaat responsible for a sudden rise in positive cases of Coronavirus.
"Due to the cases reported from one particular place, India's doubling rate of COVID-19 stands at 4.1 days. If the cases reported due to a religious gathering in the national Capital in March had not taken place, the doubling rate would have been at 7.4 days," Joint Secretary (Health) Lav Aggrawal said.
According to the Union Health Ministry's latest data, with an increase of 505 new cases in the last 24 hours, total 3,577 confirmed cases were reported on Sunday, out of which 3,219 are active, 275 have recovered and the number of deaths increased from 75 to 83.
Among the states, maximum 503 cases have been reported from Delhi followed by Maharashtra (490), Tamil Nadu (485), Kerala (306), Telangana (269) and Uttar Pradesh (227). West Bengal has reported a total of 80 positive cases out of which 10 have recovered. Till date a total of 89,534 samples have been tested.
Meanwhile, Union Home Ministry official informed that 27,661 relief camps are operational in the country, out of which 23,924 camps are being set by the government and 3,737 by NGOs. A total of 12.5 lakh people are living in relief camps. The government has also set up 19,460 food camps, out of which 9,951 food camps are established by governments, while 9,509 by NGOs.
