Cong: State slow with Covid tests

State Congress treasurer G. Narayana Reddy has strongly condemned the state government for not allowing private laboratories to conduct diagnostic tests for the novel coronavirus disease.

Mr Narayana Reddy, in a media statement on Monday, said that the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has approved nine private laboratories to conduct coronavirus tests.

The ICMR has framed guidelines and standard operating procedures (SOPs) for collection of samples, packaging and transportation. Although approval was granted a week ago, the government had not framed the mandatory local guidelines to facilitate the private labs from testing.

“Telangana state is going too slow in conducting coronavirus tests. Not even 10 per cent of suspected cases are being tested, which increases the risk of its spread,” he said. He pointed out that Governor Dr Tamilisai Soundararajan had told President Ram Nath Kovind and Vice President Venkaiah Naidu on April 3 that there were 26,586 persons with a history of foreign travel and their contacts had been kept under home quarantine. She had said that 2,400 samples were tested. The Congress leader accused the government of not sharing details of the samples tested and the statistics were revealed only through the press release sent by Raj Bhavan.

“By going slow in conducting Covid-19 tests, the government is committing the same mistake committed by Italy, Spain and the United States which conducted tests only on people with symptoms and witnessed a huge number of cases and deaths. Some countries like South Korean conducted tests on a large scale and controlled the spread of coronavirus in an effective manner," he said.

He said research done by the Chinese government in Wuhan revealed that nearly 30 per cent of people had no symptoms before they tested positive for coronavirus and the figure was 20 per cent in the US.

THE ICMR has framed guidelines and standard operating procedures (SOPs) for collection of samples, packaging and transportation. Although approval was granted a week ago, the government had not framed the mandatory local guidelines to facilitate the private labs from testing.