Shobha Karandlaje claims threat to life; seeks arms licence

Mangaluru, May 25: D V Sadananda Gowda, Union Minister for Chemical and Fertilizer, has once again written to the Ministry of External Affairs urging to take steps to operate more repatriation flights from Gulf countries to Karnataka. 

In his second letter in 10 days addressed to Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, Union Minister for External Affairs, expressed regret over not giving due priority for the repatriation of Kannadigas in the middle east during the extended second phase of Vande Bharat Mission. 

"I shall be grateful if you could personally intervene and instuct the concerned in arranging flights to Mangaluru and Bengaluru from Gulf countries in existing schedule itself," Mr Gowda urged Mr Jayashankar. 

Mangaluru, May 29: Several non-resident Kannadigas from various Gulf countries including Kingdom of Saudi Arabia on Thursday, May 28, interacted with Dakshina Kannada MP Nalin Kumar Kateel through a video conference and urged him to allow the Kannadigas stranded in the Middle East to return by facilitating the operation of repatriation flights.

The development comes amidst reports that lack of preparedness on parts of the local authorities in Karnataka compelling the Centre to delay the operation of flights from Middle East to Mangaluru and Bengaluru airports.

“We have never forgotten you. We will take necessary steps for your safe return to the homeland as soon as possible,” assured Mr Kateel after paying heed to the complaints of non-resident Kannadigas.

The video conference was organised by Ravi Shetty, ex president of Kannada Sangha Qatar.

Praveen Kumar Shetty, president, Karnataka NRI Forum of UAE, Sarvottam Shetty of UAE Karnataka Sangha, Avikshit Rai, Ravi Shetty, former president of Qatar Kannada Sangha, Santosh Shetty of Riyadh Karnataka NRI Forum, Zakariya Jokatte, president of Dammam Karnataka NRI Forum, Mohammad Mansoor, president of Bahrain Indian Overseas Congress, NS Shetty Kuwait, Pradeep Shetty of Kannada Sangha Bahrain, Karunakar Rao, Shashidhar Shetty Oman, Rajesh of Kuwait Kannada Sangha, Ramesh Bhandari, M E Muloor and Sunil Kulkarni among others participated in the video conference.

Bengaluru, Apr 28: Karnataka has found that the rapid antibody test kits for COVID-19 that the Centre supplied to the state have only 47% sensitivity. The state will be returning the kits to the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).

Karnataka had received 11,400 rapid antibody test kits from the ICMR a few days back, out of which it had sent around 200 of them to NIMHANS for validation.

After the ICMR, on Monday, sent a circular to all states to return the test kits to the suppliers, Dr CN Manjunath, Director, Jayadeva Institute of Cardiovascular Sciences and Research, and nodal officer for lab testing in the state's COVID-19 task force, said, "We have cancelled the orders we placed to Guangzhou Wondfo Biotech and Zhuhai Livzon Diagnostics for one lakh rapid antibody test kits. Since the ICMR supplied us with 11,400 kits out of the 6.5 lakh kits it procured, we will be returning the kits to them."

Manjunath told said that the validation at NIMHANS revealed the kits to have only 47% sensitivity. Sensitivity is the ability of a test to identify the true-positives in a population, i.e., the actual number of people who've been infected with the disease. With the rapid antibody testing kits being shelved, the state's plan to randomly test high risk groups has taken a backseat. 

So far, the state has tested 43,791 samples. 

Karnataka now has 22 testing facilities -- 14 government and seven private labs. Many private labs have not tested any samples so far because of the lack of test kits (the state has made it clear that it will not provide test kits to private labs). So, getting an ICMR approval for testing has become a moot point.p

Agreeing to the setback the state's plans of ramping up testing has taken, Manjunath said, "It is true that RT-PCR test kits are in shortage. Even Pune's Mylabs had a shortage in supplying test kits. But we are relying on institutes like Kidwai, Narayana Health and Biocon's Syngene that have received approval for testing. They're big institutes and we hope that they will test a large number of samples."

On reports that the Centre has RT-PCR test kits that will last for only a week, he said, "We have test kits that will last for eight to 10 days. We have ordered for more. We are hoping to receive them before the current kits run out."