Mumbai residents need to show Aadhaar cards to chemists to buy Covid self-test kits
The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has mandated for every self-test kit buyer to share their Covid-19 test report - negative or positive, with the authorities and also upload the same on the ICMR website in order to maintain a record.
Mumbai mayor Kishori Pednekar on Saturday said that people purchasing self-test kits for coronavirus disease (Covid-19) will now need to provide their Aadhaar card details to the chemists in order to maintain a record.
She further stated that if anyone tests positive for Covid-19, the information must be conveyed to the authorities and also updated online for the purpose of maintaining records.
Mumbai mayor Kishori Pednekar on Saturday said that people purchasing self-test kits for coronavirus disease (Covid-19) will now need to provide their Aadhaar card details to the chemists in order to maintain a record.
She further stated that if anyone tests positive for Covid-19, the information must be conveyed to the authorities and also updated online for the purpose of maintaining records.|#+|
Pednekar's reiteration comes a day after the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) on Friday made it mandatory for every self-test kit buyer to share their Covid-19 test result with the authorities and upload the same on the website of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR). The result has to be updated regardless of it being negative or positive, the civic body stated.
As many as seven self-test kits have received green signal from the ICMR so far, including Coviself by Mylab and Covifind by Meril Diagnostics, among others.
The BMC informed that its local ward war rooms will verify the test reports of each buyer of self-test kits by contacting them and, if necessary, health department staff will visit the buyer's residence and scrutinise the situation physically.
BMC additional municipal commissioner Suresh Kakani told Hindustan Times that most self-test kit buyers in Mumbai were not uploading the reports on the ICMR website up until now, which is why the civic body “brought these new guidelines to check that these cases don't stay unreported anymore.”
He added that chemists have been directed to share their email identities with buyers so that they too can share the Covid-19 test reports with authorities. Furthermore, Kakani said that the BMC predicts at least 10% of daily testing figures include self-test kits.
The new BMC guidelines came into effect on Friday (January 14) itself, and Kakani said that the civic body hopes in the forthcoming week, it will make an impact in the daily Covid-19 tally of Maharashtra.
Notably, Maharashtra reported a dip in its daily caseload on Friday with 43,211 new infections, down from Thursday's 46,406. In Mumbai, single-day cases maintained its declining trend for the third day consecutively after as many as 11,317 people tested positive for Covid-19.