DEHRADUN: In an attempt to "ease" the problems of people visting Uttarakhand for three to four days, the state government on Friday relaxed the norms for Covid tests allowing them to visit without any test report.
Announcing the development, Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat said, "People who are visiting for some work just for 3-4 days can come without any Covid test report. This is to ease problems of the people. But we have to be careful amid increasing number of Covid cases on the state."
The decision comes amid the surge in COVID-19 cases, with the tally crossing the 37,000-mark in the state on Thursday.
Uttarakhand government will be tabling a bill in the upcoming assembly session to make wearing facemasks in public places compulsory and impose penalty on violators.
Meanwhile, the analysis of data revealed that Uttarakhand's recovery percentage is 12% less than the national recovery average. National rate of recovery is 79% while recovery rate of Uttarakhand stands at 67%.
The data also reveals that since the last two months the hill state has remained consistently below 70%.
In a worrying development, the hill state recorded 21,401 new cases in the past one month which is 64 per cent of the total cases reported so far in the hill state.
From March 15 onwards, the state has tested over 5.25 lakh samples and have found 33,016 people to be infected.
Earlier, this week, the state government fixed rates for Covid tests on border checkposts for those who arrive without negative test reports. The rate for antigen test was fixed at Rs 800 while RT-PCR tests will be charged Rs 2400.
In case the person is tested positive, the authorities will admit him to a Covid-19 facility for further monitoring.
According to the Unlock 4.0 guidelines, people who are able to produce RT PCR/TrueNAT/CBNAAT test report within the duration of 96-hours from the time of travel with a Covid-19-negative results, they will be exempted from institutional and home quarantine.
The Unlock 4.0 guidelines issued by the state government states that for inter-state travels, people inbound to Uttarakhand will have to mandatorily register themselves on the Smart City web portal and the registration documents will be verified by the authorities at the border check posts.