Ten more Covid-19 testing facilities to start, Pune’s BJ Medical college to start from March 19

Pune: To reduce the load on city’s only testing laboratory National Institute of Virology (NIV) Pune, the state government will start ten more labs to increase the

Pune: To reduce the load on city’s only testing laboratory National Institute of Virology (NIV) Pune, the state government will start ten more labs to increase the testing capacity. One of the ten labs include Pune’s BJ Medical College, commonly known as the Sassoon General Hospital, which will start testing samples for Covid-19 from Thursday. The other testing labs would also start soon, said state health minister Rajesh Tope.

HT Image

The ten new places which will start include Mumbai’s KEM hospital which has already started functioning on Wednesday. While Pune’s BJ medical college and an additional centre at Mumbai’s Kasturba would start by Thursday. The other centres include JJ and Haffkine institute at Mumbai while the four government medical colleges at Miraj, Solapur, Aurangabad and Dhule which are likely to start in a week’s time. Each centre would have a testing capacity of about 180-200 samples daily.

Tope said that about ten lakh testing kits have been procured from the central government. He said that eventually the public transport in the city mainly the PMPML buses would be reduced to discourage people from travelling outside unnecessarily. Regarding private labs being allowed to test, Tope said that only the ICMR and NIV could validate any such private lab but also made it clear that since such tests cost about Rs 4500 the labs cannot charge the public for the same while the government too would not provide any subsidy.

He further said that various civic bodies are talking to private hotels wherein people who want special treatment and have been asked to stay in quarantine can stay at such hotels but the hotels would have to follow the strict norms of quarantine protocol and make sure that the room is completely isolated from the other rooms.

He also said that the state machinery is completely prepared and ensured that the government is taking all efforts to ensure that there is no community transmission of the virus. “We have about 700 ventilators ready for Covid19 patients if anyone needs them. Also there are only 9 cases of local transmission out of the 42 cases reported in the state. so till now most cases have come from outside and majority of them are from the Dubai group. We will also ensure that no one is skipped of screening or isolation process.”

The divisional commissioner Deepak Mhaisekar further reiterated that the administration will not hesitate to take any action against those who are not following the home isolation or quarantine advisories under section 188. Tope also said that just like Mumbai Municipal body, Pune Municipal Corporation should too imposed heavy penalty on those found spiting in public places.

International flights

Air India has stopped all international flights from Pune airport till 27 March while Spice jet which had its flight from Dubai scheduled for Thursday has cancelled it.