In a friendly gesture, the Rajasthan Government has offered to extend help to Uttarakhand in testing the samples for Covid-19. The Rajasthan government has offered that it can test up to 2,000 samples per day from Uttarakhand. Congress MLA from Manglaur Assembly constituency, Qazi Nizamuddin, has written a letter to chief minister Trivendra Singh Rawat and informed him about the offer made by the health minister of Rajasthan, Raghu Sharma. Talking to The Pioneer, Qazi who was the in-charge of the Rajasthan Congress during the Lok Sabha election of last year said that Rajasthan has developed a very efficient system of sample testing for Covid-19. “In view of the huge accumulation of untested samples in different labs of Uttarakhand, I contacted the Chief Minister of Rajasthan Ashok Gehlot. Assuring help he asked me to contact Health Minister Raghu Sharma who said that Rajasthan can test samples sent by Uttarakhand,’’ he said. The Congress MLA said that the Uttarakhand Government should accept the offer and take advantage. He said that good work is being done by Rajasthan in containment of the contagion and its Bhilwara model was appreciated by the Prime Minister.
In Uttarakhand there are five labs in the Government sector where swab samples of the suspected patients are tested for Covid-19. These labs are at Government Medical College Haldwani, Government Doon Medical College (GDMC) Dehradun, Medical College Srinagar, All India Institute of Medical Science (AIIMS) Rishikesh and Indian Institute of Petroleum (IIP), Dehradun. Apart from them one private lab in Dehradun is also authorised by Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) to conduct tests.
The spurt in the contagion of Covid-19 has created a situation where a big backlog has occurred in the sample test. The backlog is highest in Haridwar district.