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, Apr 16: The Union Health Ministry on Wednesday has identified eight districts from Karnataka as COVID-19 hotspots.
Districts that have reported a higher number of cases are classified as hotspots, the districts where cases have been reported as non-hotspots, and green zones where no cases have been reported.
Bangalore Urban, Mysuru, Belagavi, Dakshina Kannada, Bidar, Kalaburgi, Bagalokote and Dharwad have been identified as Covid-19 hotspots by Union Health Ministry, tweeted the state health department on Wednesday.
Mangaluru, Mar 28: Dakshina Kannada District observed a total shutdown on Saturday with closure of all shops, barring milk booths and pharmacy, to prevent spread of deadly Coronavirus.
The Central Market, a hub of activities where vegetables, groceries, flowers are sold, remained closed. Despite the milk booths and pharmacies being exempted from the purview of bandh, only a few milk booths remained open here.
The administration decided to go far bandh ion the wake of people failing to follow the lockdown guidelines of maintaining social distance and some wandering on the streets without valid reason. Moreover, there was increase in the number of corona cases despite measures taken, Deputy Commissioner Sindhu B Rupesh said.
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