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PIL filed in SC to increase coronavirus testing centres

Last Updated 21 March 2020, 16:03 IST

A PIL has been filed in the Supreme Court by journalist Prashant Tandon and social activist Kunajana Singh seeking a direction to the Centre to make an exponential increase in the number of testing centres and quarantine centres or isolation centres across the country to tackle outbreak of COVID-19.

They also asked for seting up temporary hospital beds and facilitating thermal screening at public places.

The top court is likely to consider the matter on Monday, along with a suo-moto matter related to measure to check spread of coronavirus among jail inmates due to overcrowding.

The petitioners contended that COVID-19 has so far spread across 152 countries and thereby, termed as a pandemic.

"Furthermore, the number of persons who have contracted the said infection has increased at an alarming rate and surpassed 1,56,000, globally within a short period of 4 months, is indicative that human-to-human transmission has been very rapid," they said.

The petitioners pointed out there was an urgent requirement to bring about an exponentially increase in the number of authorised laboratories for testing coronavirus, given the huge population of our country. The availability of just 52 designated centres for testing of COVID-19 were insufficient.

They also said the government must make temporary hospital beds and other facilities available for rural patients to combat any exigency in case of a possible outbreak in rural India.

Thermal screening must be ensured at public places as a precautionary measure, they added.

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(Published 21 March 2020, 16:03 IST)

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