Coronavirus in Delhi: Dispensaries to stay open for long as city eyes 40,000 COVID-19 tests per day

In order to ramp up the testing for novel Coronavirus in the National Capital, the Arvind Kejriwal-led government has decided to increase the working hours in dispensaries. As many as 300 dispensaries in Delhi’s 11 districts will now stay open for two more hours. A report by The Indian Express noted that the step is taken to improve testing in Delhi and double the number of tests conducted in a day to 40,000. Citing state health minister Satyendar Jain, the report said, 300 dispensaries in Delhi will be working from 9 am to 2 pm. All these health centres will offer RT-PCR and rapid antigen tests where all the tests on patients will be conducted as per the ICMR protocol.

As the number of Coronavirus cases goes uphill, CM Arvind Kejriwal has sought more tests. On Friday, the number of COVID-19 cases went up by 1,808 whereas 20 people, unfortunately, succumbed to the deadly infection. This has taken the total cases in the city to 1,69,412. It has been 10 days since the number of positive cases has been recorded over 1,000 in one day. This is pushing the government to adhere to stringent guidelines and aggressive measures to curb the spread of the virus. The report said that in Delhi, 6,920 RT-PCR/CBNAAT/TrueNat along with 16,013 rapid antigen tests have been performed in the last 24 hours. In one million, up to 80,350 tests are being done taking the total number of tests conducted to 15,26,655.

According to Jain, the government’s main focus is to test, track, and isolate cases as soon as possible. He believes that if the government does not stick to the aggressive testing technique, all efforts that have been made so far will go in vain. He added that there are still many people who are not coming forward and getting tested.

Meanwhile, according to the report, Principal Health Secretary Vikram Dev Dutt has written to the MHA and NITI Aayog member Dr. V K Paul in order to seek suggestions regarding the state government’s plan to ramp up the COVID-19 testing. In the note, Dutt asked the central government about the extent of scaling tests and also requested the opinion and guidance of the expert committee on the geographical areas for testing.