A day before Red brigade’s ‘harmony rally’, Mangaluru streets turn Saffron

Bengaluru, Jun 8: Normal life is slowly returning to normal across Karnataka with the state government further easing the restrictions by throwing open places of worship, hotels, malls for the public.

Despite these places being opened after a gap of more than two months, the places wore a deserted look as the people are and cautious and not ready to take of risk of venturing out amid the ongoing Corona threat.

"Business is not as heavy as expected though it was allowed after a gap of almost three months. You can see for yourself the crowd, it is not what it should have been in a commercial area like this prior to the imposition of lockdown. However, hope it will improve", a Cloth merchant B Ramesh told UNI when asked for his reaction.

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.

Mangaluru, Jul 1: The Bajpe police station under the limits of Mangaluru City Police Commissionerate has been sealed down after an arrested accused was tested positive for the Coronavirus.

Police said on Wednesday that the Bajpe police arrested two persons in connection with plotting dacoity in Oddidakala in Bajpe. After the arrest, their throat swab was sent for a test. On Wednesday, one of the accused tested positive for the Coronavirus.

In this connection, the Bajpe police station has been sealed down and the police personnel who were present during the arrest are placed under home quarantine.