Pune: PMC to buy antigen kits which can detect COVID19 in 30 minutes
Sumit Singh
Pune, June 24, 2020: The Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) Standing committee sanctioned and approved the purchase of 1 lakh antigen kits for fast detection of COVID19 in 30 minutes. This will help PMC to do extensive tracing and testing in the coming month, said Rubal Agarwal, PMC additional commissioner.
Yesterday 467 new patients were found in Pune city taking the number of patients to 13,153. Also, 10 patients while 273 people got discharged from hospitals. Out of the total 13,153 patients, 528 have died while 7945 have been cured till now. There are still 4680 active patients undergoing treatment in various hospitals. They include 277 critical patients out of which 57 are on ventilator support. Till now 93,808 people have been tested for COVID in Pune city.
Need to increase testing capacity: The state government recommended that the maximum charge for each Covid-19 test by private laboratories should not exceed Rs 2,200. The PMC, therefore, is planning to bring down the price of the COVID-19 test. It plans to increase its daily testing capacity by 500 samples, to ensure enough testing is being done in the city. The officials recently conducted a meeting to discuss the guidelines capping the cost of sample testing by the private labs. Currently, 3,000 tests are conducted in the Pune district daily, out of which 1,500 to 2,000 take place in the city.
PMC will increase its review sessions: PMC takes the review of containment zones every 15 days, but as the numbers are increasing rapidly in non-containment zones, it has been decided to take a review every week. This way, new containment zones can be announced every week preferably on Friday.
