NEW DELHI: Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain on Thursday wrote a letter to the Union Home Secretary Ajay Bhalla stating that officials from the Home Ministry have been intervening and putting pressure on officers of the state government to stop them from increasing number of COVID-19 tests being conducted in the national capital daily.
Earlier this week, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal announced that keeping an eye on the number of coronavirus cases increasing once again in the city, the government will increase its per day testing capacity from 20,000 to 40,000 test daily.
"To combat with COVID-19, our strategy so far has involved conducting more tests and isolating the identified corona positive individuals. Both the state and Central government have been working together to tackle the situation. But when some state government officers said that pressure is being applied by the Home Ministry on them to not increase the number of tests in Delhi, I was shocked," Jain wrote to Bhalla.
Jain stated that the city has an elected state government which is capable of taking its own decisions and the interference from the Centre is an unwelcome distraction. "Why is Delhi being stopped from increasing the num ber of tests being conducted. When it has been proven globally that testing is the primary step to control the pandemic then why can’t Delhi increase testing to 40,000 per day," Jain stated.
According to sources, the Delhi government will have to follow the testing guidelines issued by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR). Currently, Delhi is conducting tests ranging from 16,000 to 20,000 on an average per day.
Earlier, the Delhi High Court had also pulled up the state goverment for not increasing the number of RT-PCR tests conducted. Authorities, however, claimed that RATs are more useful when it comes to testing a large population.