HYDERABAD: The Central government has swooped in and snatched away Telangana’s chance to increase its Covid-19 testing capacity by more than 4,000 tests per day in order to benefit Kolkata. The move comes at a time when the number of cases in the State are rising and it desperately needs to ramp up its testing capacity.
A machine named Cobas-8800, manufactured by Roche Diagnostics, was meant to be installed in Hyderabad at the Nizam’s Institute of Medical Sciences (NIMS) for conducting Covid-19 tests. This would have even made Telangana the first state in the country to be in possession of the powerful testing machine, which can test as many as 4,032 samples in 24 hours, according to the company’s website. This was made possible as the State government negotiated and secured the machine through the Ramky Group from its CSR funds.
Health Minister Eatala Rajender had raised the issue on Sunday as he attacked BJP president JP Nadda for his negative remarks on the Telangana government’s response to the Covid-19 outbreak. The Telangana government made public two letters related to the issue on Monday.
As per one letter written by a senior official of Roche Diagnostics to the Telangana State Medical Services and Infrastructure Corporation (TSMIDC), the machine had arrived on June 8 in Chennai, and was to be shipped to Hyderabad.The letter says that in the meantime, ICMR directed the company to ‘immediately’ divert the instrument to National Institute of Cholera and Enteric Diseases (NICED) in Kolkata. As per another letter written by the ICMR to Roche Diagnostics, the instructions from ICMR to install the machine, which was located in Berlin, at NICED in Kolkata, was based on directions from the Prime Minister’s Office and an empowered group of the Central government.
Twitter storm over TS’s revelations
As the Telangana government released the controversial letters highlighting the Centre’s role in the State not getting its first Cobas-8800 Covid testing machine, many people, including some affiliated to the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi, took to Twitter and started criticising Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the ICMR
Where’s the money, Eatala asks Centre
Speaking on the sidelines of a meeting with health department officials on Monday, Health Minister Eatala Rajender stated that instead of releasing funds to fight the pandemic, the Centre was washing its hands off by saying ‘bang thalis’ and ‘light diyas’. The Centre had released only `214 crore till now, he added, and attacked the BJP for criticising Telangana for conducting fewer Covid-19 tests