E-Paper
Remove bottlenecks to ramp up Covid-19 testing: Cong
The government has repeatedly pointed out that it has increased testing. In an interview, health minister Harsh Vardhan has said that the government plans to increase the tests up to 100,000 by the end of May.
The Congress has asked the government to ramp up testing for the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) to 100,000 individuals every day, and accused it of testing at much lower numbers than capacity — either because it wants to under-report numbers or is unsure of its implications.
After an hour-long meeting of the party’s taskforce on Covid-19, chaired by former prime minister Manmohan Singh, met, the party’s former president and Member of Parliament, Rahul Gandhi, tweeted, “ Experts agree that mass random testing is the key to beating Corona. In India, a bottleneck is stopping us from scaling testing from the current 40,000 per day to 1 lakh tests a day, for which test kits are already in stock. PM needs to act fast and clear the bottleneck.”
Singh too suggested testing and tracing as key tools in the battle against the pandemic.
“There are problems with respect to the inadequacy of testing facilities and without more aggressive facilities of testing, we are not going to conquer this menace,” Singh said during the meeting, according to a short video clip released by the party.
Besides Singh and Gandhi, senior leaders P Chidambaram, KC Venugopal, Randeep Surjewala, Jairam Ramesh, Manish Tewari, and younger leaders such as Praveen Chakravarty, Rohan Gupta, Gourav Vallabh, and Supriya Shrinate were present at the meeting.
Briefing reporters after the meet, Tewari accused the ruling Bharatiya Janata party of testing much lesser than its capacity. He said that testing right now are as low as 39,000 while India has the capacity of one lakh tests per day. “Is the government attempting to play down the magnitude of the problem or is it unsure of dealing with implications of random testing,” said the Anandpur Sahib Lok Sabha MP.
The government has repeatedly pointed out that it has increased testing. In an interview, health minister Harsh Vardhan has said that the government plans to increase the tests up to 100,000 by the end of May.
Another theme that dominated the Congress meeting was the plight of migrant workers. Members agreed that the Centre should step aside and let the states work out a mechanism among themselves to help migrants move from one state to another. In the past two days, several states have attempted to coordinate among themselves, and arrange transport to bring migrants from their states back home.
Gandhi suggested that India should have a broad framework to protect migrants, and that states must be allowed to do their bit in retrieving migrants. “We must also acknowledge that state governments are actively responsible for driving this, and that different state governments might choose different methodologies to solve this problem,” Gandhi said.
Former finance minister, Chidambaram, while agreeing that states will have to be at the centre of any work related to their repatriation, emphasised that a protectionist mechanism was needed for migrant workers as most of them will be stranded where they are. “The bulk will remain where they are. And they must be given immediate cash and grain,” he said, according to the same video clip.
In the context of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s meeting with chief ministers, scheduled for Monday, the taskforce also discussed the lockdown, which ends on May 3. Tiwari said states can only formulate a strategy until there is a national plan to deal with the crisis. “We hope the PM puts out a comprehensive, holistic strategy in dealing with lockout exit during the meeting with Chief Ministers,” he said.
