According to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW), there are 1251 confirmed cases of coronavirus cases in the country and 32 fatalities have been reported.
Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare Dr Harsh Vardhan on Tuesday (March 31) reviewed sampling and testing strategy for COVID-19 with senior officials of ICMR, Department of Science & Technology, Biotechnology and CSIR.
During this session, an elaborate discussion on the possible issues like procurement of reagents, website integration, research studies both planned and done so far etc also took place according to an official statement.
It was also informed during the meeting by DG, ICMR that 129 government-run laboratories are currently functional with a testing capacity of 13000 tests per day along with private labs having around 16000 collection centres.
The statement further added that Rapid Antibody test kits are also ordered to fight against the COVID-19 outbreak.
Currently, 38,442 tests have been done with 1,334 tests in private labs across the country.
The officials held further discussions about the status of research into developing solutions for handling the novel coronavirus.
"Over 200 proposals have been received in the last one week against the funding calls of DST, from which over 20 entities are under active consideration for support in the first phase, taking into account the relevance, cost, speed and scale of solutions to manage COVID-19," Sharma said.
Harsh Vardhan also lauded the public health surveillance and response, technical guidance and laboratory support provided by the ICMR. He then went on to acknowledge the Department of Science & Technology, Bio-technology and CSIR for their support in the development of Ventilators, Testing kits, PPEs etc. during these dark times.
The Union Minister also claimed that extra support shall be provided to those States/Union Territories who do not have laboratories/testing facilities as well as to the North Eastern States and UT of Ladakh.
Dr Harsh Vardhan also stated that research work should continue in dynamic mode simultaneously with the COVI-19 management efforts and exhorted the scientists that India should rise to the occasion and develop solutions not only for India but also for the world.
According to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW), there are 1251 confirmed cases of coronavirus cases in the country and 32 fatalities have been reported.
Worldwide, coronavirus cases continue to rise dramatically, with the number of infections nearing 8 lakh on Monday. The global death toll has crossed 37,000.
The US has the most cases with over 163,000, followed by Italy at 101,739, Spain 87,956 and China at 82,223. Italy has recorded the highest number of deaths with 11,591, followed by Spain's death toll of 7,716, China's 3,308 and US' 3,008.
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