New Delhi: Expressing concern over the low testing in Telangana, the Centre has nudged the state to test more to tackle the coronavirus pandemic.
Economic Times has quoted a top central official as saying, “We are quite concerned about the testing ratio in Telangana and have asked them to ramp up testing at the earliest.”
Calling up Telangana chief secretary on Wednesday, a central representative has expressed concern over it. Telangana is the second state after West Bengal where the Centre has asked for more tests.
Empowered groups tracking disease testing and surveillance and an inter-ministerial central team which visited Telangana, have also alerted the state’s medical fraternity on low testing.
Compared to Andhra Pradesh which conducted 1.41 lakh tests till May 6, with 1777 confirmed coronavirus cases, Telangana has completed only 19,278 tests with 1096 confirmed cases in the state. Even West Bengal which came under fire by the centre for low testing has completed over 27,500 tests as on May 5. As per data on COVID 19 India portal, Delhi, Maharashtra, Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh respectively record 67,852, 1,81,746, 89,632 and 1,05,234 tests done.
In Telangana 518 people were tested for every 1 million people. In contrast, Andhra Pradesh tested 2705 people, Gujarat tested 1319, Tamil Nadu tested 2310, Delhi tested 3424, Maharashtra tested 1488, and Karnataka tested 1274 per million population. Telangana is second to West Bengal which has a test per million population figure of 285.