People coming from Delhi to Noida will be randomly tested for the coronavirus from Wednesday (November 18), the Gautam Buddh Nagar administration, adjoining the national capital, in Uttar Pradesh said.
A petition has been filed before the Supreme Court on Friday seeking its direction to the Central government and all the state governments to fix the maximum rate for the RT-PCR test for COVID-19 to Rs 400 uniformly across India.
Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan on Sunday said that rollout of the indigenously-developed faster and cheaper "FELUDA" Covid-19 test is expected in the next few weeks.
More accurate than a rapid antigen test and almost as quick, India's CRISPR 'Feluda' coronavirus test that changes colour on detection of the SARS-CoV-2 virus could be a cheaper, faster and simpler alternative to an RT-PCR diagnosis, scientists said.
The Delhi government has asked all districts to retest all symptomatic patients, who have tested negative for COVID-19 on rapid antigen test, using the more reliable RT-PCR method, after it found the process was not followed in over 1,400 cases.
Researchers have developed a method for fast, cheap, yet accurate testing for Covid-19 infection. The method simplifies and frees the testing from expensive reaction steps, enabling upscaling of the diagnostics.
India conducted 2.39 crore COVID-19 tests in August, of which 1.24 crore were done using rapid antigen kits, the government said on Sunday.
With the price of RTPCR test kits and reagents used for coronavirus testing coming down, the Uttar Pradesh government has reduced the charge for conducting the COVID-19 test to Rs 1,600 from Rs 2,500 by all labs including those privately owned.
The number of coronavirus recoveries has reached nearly 21 lakhs nationwide as the country's recovery rate rises to nearly 74 percent.
People arriving from abroad in India will be required to go through a test for coronavirus at the airport and won't be required for an institutional quarantine period if results are found to be negative. However, the proposal is yet to get approval from the health ministry.
After clocking 37 per cent COVID-19 positivity ratio a month ago, the city has now brought it down to around 12 per cent following measures such as ramped up testing and increased surveillance, a top official of the Greater Chennai Corporation said on Saturday.
Amid pandemic when people are active online more than ever, the risk of them being targeted through cyberattacks has also increased. In order to make people aware, banks are now making aware customers and sending alert messages asking them not to share confidential information.
Telangana aims to increase the Covid-19 testing capacity to 10,000 a day.
The Chandigarh administration on Monday fixed Rs 2,000 for a COVID-19 test.
The Health Department will conduct 50,000 random tests in Guwahati city following the recent spike in COVID-19 positive cases, Assam Health Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said on Saturday.
Researchers have found that the drug hydroxychloroquine — with or without the antibiotic azithromycin — did not reduce the risk of ventilation or death, and was associated with longer length of hospital stay in COVID-19 patients.
Air India has made it mandatory for its pilots and cabin crew members to check and confirm that their pre-flight COVID-19 test results are negative before they operate an aircraft, according to an official communication issued hours after the Delhi-Moscow flight incident involving a pilot on Saturday.
With a testing rate of over 10,000 per million, Jammu & Kashmir is now leading all states in the country in testing.
The testing capacity for COVID-19 has been scaled up to around 95,000 tests per day and a total of 15,25,631 tests have been conducted so far across 332 government and 121 private laboratories, Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said on Saturday.
Given that most Indians are unlikely to be tested for COVID-19, scientists are taking a cue from the country’s surveillance programme for polio and turning to sewage to get a clearer snapshot of how many people are infected with the coronavirus.
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