Maharashtra to ramp up Covid testing amid rising cases

A day after Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray asked to ramp up testing, the BrihanMumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has decided to scale up testing from the level of around present 8,000 to a whopping 30,000-40,000 per day.

“The number of covid tests currently taking place in Mumbai is 8,000 per day and it is necessary to increase it to 30,000-40,000 thousand per day. At present, the number of infected patients has reached 8 per cent and this rate is a warning sign. Increasing the number of tests will make it easier to detect as many infections as possible,” BMC’s municipal commissioner and administrator Dr Iqbal Singh Chahal said.

Meanwhile, Maharashtra Covid Task Force Chief Dr Sanjay Oak stated that the next couple of weeks is crucial in terms of Covid-19. “It is very important to find the infected patients and increase the number of tests. Although new variants of the Covid-19 virus have been identified, their severity is not yet known,” he said.

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The number of tests should be increased immediately by the joint commissioners/ deputy commissioners, assistant commissioners and medical health officers of all the wards, where more people are found to be infected. “All the citizens in contact with the affected patients should be traced and their test should be done,” he said.

Collective Covid-19 tests of all the residents in buildings/housing societies where patients are found to be infected would be done. “Also, the focus should be on making those buildings/housing establishments infection-free as soon as possible,” he said.

All the Jumbo Covid Centers are advised to have equipped systems and adequate manpower.

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“In particular, intensive care beds and the necessary medical facilities for the same should be made available so that there should be no problem in case the number of patients increases,” Dr Chahal told the meeting.

Structural stability inspection of all Jumbo Covid Centers would be done to ensure that there is no danger to the structure in the monsoon.