Assam recorded 753 fresh Covid-19 cases in the past 24 hours, taking the state's tally to 8,547, while the death toll rose to 12, Health Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said on Wednesday.
With 502 of the new cases in Guwahati city, he termed the Covid-19 situation in Guwahati as “most critical”. Guwahati, which falls under Kamrup (Metro) district and where a complete lockdown has been imposed for 14 days since June 28 midnight, has reported around 1,800 cases so far.
“As the people are not cautious enough, that is why there is a rapid spike of coronavirus cases in the state's main city,” Sarma said, noting that even after giving samples for testing, people are not isolating themselves. He also told the media that so far over four lakh samples have been tested. “The health authorities have evolved new testing methods in which sample testing report would be available in 15 minutes to one hour time,” he added. Claiming his state is in the third position in testing ratio in the country, the Minister said that 11,750 tests per million are being conducted in Assam compared to Andhra Pradesh's 16,000 and Tamil Nadu's 14,000.
“Assam within the next one week is expected to cross the testing ratio of Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. Union Home Minister has asked me to conduct 10,000 tests per day. But this is not possible. We cannot force the people for Covid-19 testing unless they show any symptoms. We can conduct tests of maximum 4,000 samples per day in the existing 13 laboratories. Six more laboratories would be ready soon.”