Former CM Siddaramaiah unhurt, 5 SUVs damaged in serial crash

Mangaluru, July 13: Dakshina Kannada district in-charge Minister Kota Srinivas Poojary on Monday said that all COVID-19 patients in the district will be treated for free in the hospitals of all medical colleges in the district.

Speaking to newsmen after visiting the COVID-19 treatment facility at KMC Hospital here, Poojary stated that all COVID-19 patients including BPL families, APL families, migrant workers and those without a ration card, will be treated free of charge in the district’s medical colleges. Patients can show their Aadhaar card at the hospital and get free treatment.

Provision of free treatment for COVID-19 patients at Wenlock hospital will be continued. In Dakshina Kannada district, the number of people recovering from the virus and being discharged hospitals is high. There is no need for the people of the district to panic. The government is committed to the health of the people, Poojary said.

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, May 26: Ministers of the central government or state governments or officers on their official duty, who are travelling across states, will be exempted from requirements of quarantine, the Karnataka government said on Monday.

The state government issued an addendum to Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for inter-state passengers.

"Any person who gets a negative COVID test certificate (from ICMR approved lab) which is not more than two days old from the date of journey will be exempted from the requirement of institutional quarantine," read the addendum.

The state government has laid down new norms for those coming from other states (including those coming by domestic air flights).

Passengers coming from 'high prevalence states' (Maharashtra, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Delhi, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh) would be required to undergo a seven-day "institutional quarantine", which will be followed by home quarantine.

The new norms also said that home quarantine of 14 days would be necessary for the passengers coming from other states.