Cong, JDS gear up for coordination panel meeting amid fears of operation Kamala

Bengaluru, Apr 16: A 66-year old man from the city, became the thirteenth COVID-19 related fatality in Karnataka, Health Department officials said on Thursday.

The elderly patient from Bengaluru, who was coronavirus positive died on April 15 at Victoria Hospital in the city, officials said.

"He was referred from a private hospital and was admitted in Victoria Hospital and was on ventilator support since April 10," they added.

A 80-year old woman in Belagavi and a 65-year old man from Chikkaballapura had also died on Wednesday.

Dubai, Jun 9: A young NRI engineer in Dubai, who supported his pregnant spouse to file a plea in the Supreme Court of India for early repatriation from the UAE amid the coronavirus lockdown passed away in his sleep of suspected cardiac arrest.

The deceased identified as Nithin Chandran (28) and his wife Athira Geetha Sreedharan (27) had hit headlines in the past after the latter filed a writ petition seeking assistance to be repatriated to India, following the suspension of flights to the country, as she was due for the delivery of their first baby in the first week of July.

Chandran, a mechanical engineer was working at a construction firm in Dubai. According to the reports, he had stayed back in UAE after sending his wife home on the first day of repatriation from Dubai on May 7 under the Vande Bharat Mission.

The deceased was receiving the treatment for high blood pressure and a heart condition and is suspected to have died of a heart attack while asleep, his friend said. However, the exact cause of his death is yet to be known.

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.