Our govt being maligned over low testing: CM

Having drawn criticism over low rate of Coronavirus tests in the state, chief minister Mamata Banerjee today slammed the Centre for not providing adequate testing kits and alleged that the state government was being unnecessarily maligned on this issue. “Our government is being maligned over low testing.

Their attitude is such that they would be happy if we could carry some Coronavirus from outside and spread it within our state,” said Banerjee at a press conference at Nabanna today.

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Banerjee said that there are three types of kits namely Rapid testing kits, BGI RT PCR kits, and Antigen kits. The 10,000 rapid testing kits that were provided by the ICMR were defective and was withdrawn. BGI RT PCR kits have also been withdrawn as per the email from NICED received yesterday and Antigen kits are not available in the hospitals of Bengal.

“Whose fault is this? Who is to be blamed for providing us faulty kits?” Banerjee questioned. “Two swab kits are needed for all patients. Viral Transport Kit provided by the Central government is 2500 whereas we did 7,037 tests. The required kits were 14,000. Can we understand the situation where are we standing?

If tests are not conducted on time then it could lead to the patient’s death,” she said adding that the state health department had ordered for some kits but the government does not know when those would arrive. The Centre has given 7,000 PPEs, while the state government has distributed 4,19,000 PPEs.

“Those who have been spreading lies about providing PPEs, please answer,” she said. Slamming the Centre for not providing testing kits and instead deploying central teams for supervising Corona situation, Banerjee said, “Only big talks and daily meetings. Teams are being sent to find out law and order situation in Bengal. They are finding out whether lockdown is being imposed here and whether people of Bengal are getting food or not,” Banerjee said.

State chief secretary Rajiva Sinha said that it is not correct that more tests mean detection of more positive cases as out of 855 samples that were tested since yesterday 32 were tested positive. All these fresh cases have been detected from Kolkata, Howrah, Hooghly, Asansol and Siliguri.

The total active Corona cases have risen to 300 in Bengal, he said adding that no persons have died due to Corona in the last 24 hours. Seventy nine Covid-19 patients have been discharged from hospitals among which six were discharged since yesterday.

Earlier in the day, state government refuted the MHA’s accusation of not cooperating with the two Inter-Ministerial Central Teams (IMCTs) that were sent to Bengal two days ago to assess Corona situation in the Kolkata, Howrah, North 24 Parganas, East Midnapore, Kalimpong, Jalpaiguri and Darjeeling.

In response to MHA’s letter that was issued to the state government yesterday directing not to obstruct the working of the two central teams, Sinha wrote that “it is not a fact” that there was no cooperation with the teams and gave an assurance that it will abide by all Union government orders on lockdown. “…. the teams had arrived without any prior consultation with us and, therefore, there was neither such opportunity to provide any logistic support as envisaged in the order dated 19 April nor the team asked for any help,” wrote Sinha to Union home secretary Ajay Bhalla. Sinha said the team, visiting Kolkata and nearby districts, went to the BSF guest house in Kolkata and the team, which is visiting Jalpaiguri, Darjeeling and Kalimpong, went to the SSB guest house in Siliguri on their own.

He informed that the IMCT in Kolkata led by Apurva Chandra met him in his office on 20 April and discussed about the implementation of lockdown measures and other efforts of the state government to contain and combat Covid-19.The next meeting with the team was on 21 April at their place at BSF mess, Sinha wrote. “I am also in touch with Vineet Joshi of IMCT at Siliguri and have apprised him about the steps taken by the state government along with sharing of our reports on mail,” he added.