Union Minister for Health & Family Welfare, Science & Technology and Earth Sciences, Harsh Vardhan launches India’s first I-Lab (Infectious disease diagnostic lab) for COVID-19 testing in rural and inaccessible areas of India in New Delhi on Thursday | —PTI
New Delhi
The Centre on Thursday pitched for a unified strategy for Delhi and its satellite cities to tackle the coronavirus pandemic, while the city government ramped up COVID-19 diagnosis by commencing testing through the rapid antigen method.
While reviewing the coronavirus situation in Delhi-NCR, Union Home Minister Amit Shah said the satellite cities like Gurgaon, Noida and Ghaziabad cannot be separated from the national capital in this battle.
"The home minister favoured a unified strategy for Delhi-NCR to tackle the coronavirus," a home ministry source said.
Besides CM Arvind Kejriwal, Delhi Police Commissioner SN Shrivastava, senior officials of NCR districts and Ministries of Home and Health and ICMR attended the meeting.
Shah assured the NCR districts that the central government will provide all support to them in their fight against the coronavirus pandemic, another source said.
Delhi and its satellite cities, an urban belt sprawling across three states, has one of the highest population densities in the country. A large number of people reside in Delhi and work in the satellite cities or vice versa.
The NCR comprises districts belonging to Haryana, UP and Rajasthan, the prominent ones being Gurgaon, Faridabad (both in Haryana), Gautam Buddh Nagar (Noida) and Ghaziabad (both in UP). "In view of the structure of Delhi-NCR region, all concerned bodies need to unite and work on a common strategy against the coronavirus pandemic. In this context, I met with Delhi Chief Minister and senior officials of Center and Delhi-NCR today to discuss how to evolve a strategy as soon as possible," Shah tweeted.
On the meeting by Shah with officials of Delhi-NCR, a home ministry statement said the minister said an expert committee decided the rates for COVID beds and treatment in Delhi, and these could be applied in hospitals in NCR cities after consultations. Meanwhile, the Centre plans to conduct six lakh rapid antigen COVID-19 tests in Delhi at 169 new facilities being set up in the capital where 50,000 kits have already been supplied, Union Minister G Kishan Reddy said on Thursday.
