Amid surge in COVID-19 cases, Thane Municipal Corporation (TMC) has now purchased near about 1 lakh antigen kits to conduct testing, reported Mumbai Live. Now, with this development, Thanekars can get tested for COVID-19 in just 30 minutes.
These kits will be made available to the TMC in couple days and soon testing with antigen kits will begin.
The rapid antigen test allows faster diagnosis without laboratory examination of samples and results are available within 30 minutes.
According to the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), as India is lifting lockdowns in various parts of the country in a phased manner, it is expected to see an upsurge in cases of COVID-19 due to increased transmission of SARS-CoV-2 virus. In view of this, it is important to scale up testing capacity to the maximum possible levels, it said.
Earlier, with offices allowed to work with 10% of staff strength, the BMC on Friday has asked corporate companies and industries located in containment zones to do antigen tests for their employees.
A new 1000-bed hospital for coronavirus patients will be set up in Thane city, district guardian minister Eknath Shinde said last week.
The hospital will be set up on the land belonging to Voltas on Pokhran Road 2, he said after taking a review of coronavirus situation in the city.
It will be built by CIDCO and will have requisite medical facilities including Oxygen and Non-Oxygen beds, ventilators, ICU and a dialysis centre, Shinde said.
The COVID-19 cases in Maharashtra's Thane district have nearly doubled in the last 15 days and risen considerably since May 1, a data released by the authorities revealed.
According to a health bulletin, Thane district, which had detected just 1,011 coronavirus cases till May 1, has recorded 33,324 infections till Tuesday night.
In the last 15 days alone, the cases in the district have nearly doubled from 17,008 to 33,324, it stated.
The deaths too have seen a rise from 29 casualties till May 1 to 1,064 so far, the data stated.
Meanwhile, considering the pattern of increase in cases, the civic administration in Thane, Mira Bhayandar and Kalyan Dombivli towns have imposed a total lockdown for the next 10 days.
The municipal corporations of Bhiwandi and Navi Mumbai have restricted the lockdown to certain containment zones, an order stated.
The civic corporations have been directed to focus on contact tracing, increasing containments and taking stringent action against violators of the lockdown.
