10 Indian beaches including one in Udupi to be converted into global quality

New Delhi, May 3: The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has crossed over one million RT-PCR tests for COVID-19 on Saturday evening marking a big landmark, ICMR officials said.

"We have tested about 10,40000 tests till Saturday evening. In a few days, we have increased our testing capacity. ICMR has been doing more than 70,000 tests in the last two consecutive days," he said.

On Saturday, ICMR released that a total of 976363 samples have been tested till date. From May 1 till evening on Saturday, 1,37,346 tests were done.

The top three states which are doing vigorous testing includes--Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Rajasthan. As on date, these three states have conducted more than one lakh test respectively.

However, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka and Delhi still need to ramp up their testing capacity.

ICMR has always emphasised that the confirmatory test for diagnosis of COVID-19 infection is RT-PCR test of the throat and/or nasal swab, which detects virus at an early stage. Recently, Dr GS Toteja, Additional Director General of ICMR had said that to contain coronavirus infection, RT-PCR tests must be continued vigorously as the principal diagnostic tests.

RT-PCR tests are now available in 310 government laboratories and 111 private set up across the country.

On Friday, the Centre informed that ICMR has ordered 21.35 lakh diagnostic kits. As on date, India has reported about 37,776 confirmed coronavirus cases and 1223 deaths.

Bengaluru, Jul 10: With 2,313 more people testing positive for coronavirus in Karnataka in the last 24 hours, its overall tally of patients rose to 33,418 on Friday, health officials said.

57 patients died in Karnataka in the last 24 hours, with majority (27) of them from Bengaluru, taking the state''s death toll to 543, the officials added.

Bengaluru accounted for 1,447 or 63 per cent of the new COVID-19 cases, spiking its tally to 15,329, out of which 11,687 are active cases.

The city alone accounts for 46 per cent of all the cases in the state.

As many as 45 deaths had Severe Acute Respiratory Infection (SARI) as a common symptom.

Among the new cases, excluding Bengaluru, Dakshina Kannada accounted for 139 infections, followed by Vijayapura (89), Ballari (66), Kalaburagi (58), Yadgir and Mysuru (51 each) among others.

On Friday, a record 1,003 patients got discharged, 601 of them in Bengaluru alone with the total number of discharges rising up to 13,836.

Until now, Karnataka has tested 7.79 lakh samples for Covid, out of which 7.28 lakh tested negative.

Despite the record number of discharges, patients in ICU rose to 472.

Of the 33,418 cases, 19,035 are active in the state.

Bengaluru, May 29: Karnataka reported 248 new cases of coronavirus on Friday, and with that, the state tally surged to 2,781. 

A 50-year-old woman, resident of Chikkaballapura district, succumbed to the infection on Friday. She was admitted to a private hospital on May 24 following acute kidney injury and pneumonia. As her condition deterorted, she was shifted to a designated hospital in Bengaluru Urban on May 28, where she tested COVID-19 positive.

Out of the 248 cases, only 16 persons have contracted the virus inside the state. The remaining are the people who have returned from Maharashtra, Delhi, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Ireland.

The maximum number of people, who tested positive for COVID-19, have returned from Maharashtra. Most of these people are residents of Udupi, Kalaburagi, Yadagiri and Raichuru.

Besides, five people have a travel history to Delhi, while one person each has tested positive on returning from Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan and Ireland.

Fifteen people have tested positive within the state and have been infected by persons who had previously tested positive or have a history of Influenza-like Illness and Severe Acute Respiratory Illness.

Out of all the cases, 10 have been reported in Bengaluru Urban while one has come up in Bengaluru Rural.

Meanwhile, on Thursday, the Karnataka government asked the Civil Aviation Ministry to reduce the number of flights coming in the state from the five worst-hit states -- Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.

"Karnataka has appealed to the Civil Aviation Ministry to take steps to lessen the air traffic to the state, with the sacred intention that there may not be adequate quarantine facilities if there is a huge turnout in a short span of time," state Law and Parliamentary Affairs Minister J.C. Madhuswamy explained.