DEHRADUN: Amid apprehensions that the ongoing Mahakumbh in Haridwar may become a ‘superspreader’ event, the Uttarakhand government is facing an uphill task of testing 50,000 people daily for Covid-19 in the city alone.
The Uttarakhand High Court earlier this week had asked the state government to ensure at least 50,000 samples are tested per day in Haridwar district during the ongoing pilgrim event.
An official with the state health department, on the condition of anonymity, said, “Even if every available resource is deployed, we won’t be able to test 50,000 people every day in Haridwar or Uttarakhand. We are trying our best to test as many people possible.”
The medical infrastructure in the hill state draws a grim picture when it comes to testing.
At present the state tests Covid samples at 10 government labs, which have the maximum capacity to handle 9,700 samples per day. Apart from this, 12 private labs can conduct 1,000 to 1,500 tests daily.
The data from state health department also revealed that a total of 3,41,304 Covid-19 tests were done in Haridwar in the last three months.
In January as many as 69,332 tests were conducted in the pilgrim city, followed by 1,09,284 tests in February and 1,62,688 tests in March.
The average daily tests in the city in last three months are 3,792 while in March the figure is 5,248 per day.
The Mahakumbh started on April 1 and will go on for a month with over 5 crore pilgrims expected to visit the city for ceremonial dip in the Ganges.
Meanwhile, total active cases in Uttarakhand shot up to 2,638 on Saturday with 439 new infections. Till date Uttarakhand has tested 27,76,528 samples and results of 37,470 samples are still awaited.
Total 1,01,714 cases have surfaced in the hill state till date starting from March 15, 2020.
Out of these 95,825 recovered/ cured while 1,725 lost their lives and 1,526 moved out of the state.
On April 14, which is also the day of Baisakhi festival, it is estimated that over one crore devotees may visit the holy city.