indica News Bureau-
After Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi increased the lockdown in India to flatten the curve of coronavirus to May 3 as cases of coronavirus crossed 10,000 in India, Rahul Gandhi in a tweet said that India was far behind when it came to COVID-19 testing and mass testing was the only key to determine the exact number of infected persons so that the country can take measures to cure them and keep them from spreading the infection further.
The novel coronavirus, or COVID-19, the pandemic has spread across 185 countries and territories. Confirmed COVID-19 cases in India stand at 10,363. The death toll from the outbreak in India is at 339. Maharashtra, Delhi and Tamil Nadu have reported the highest number of cases, with Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh in the top 5.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi today said that India delayed the purchase of testing kits and is now critically short of them.
“With just 149 tests per million Indians, we are now in the company of Laos (157), Niger (182) and Honduras (162). Mass testing is the key to fighting the virus. At present we are nowhere in the game,” he tweeted.
Congress president Sonia Gandhi also wrote to PM Modi on Monday, asking the government to provide 10 kg grains per person to beneficiaries of National Food Security Act till September this year. With thousands of daily wage workers and their families struggling for two square meals a day, the situation in India will only get worse for them as the lockdown has been extended further by 18 days.
This is tragic given that India has large buffer stock of food grains precisely for exigencies like the current pandemic, she said.
“The current crisis has pushed many relatively food secure families into food insecurity and poverty,” Gandhi wrote to PM Modi. She also asked the government to provide the ration to even those people who did not have a ration card but were facing the food insecurity.
Globally, there have been over 19.19 lakh confirmed cases of COVID-19 with approximately least 1.19 lakh deaths.
