Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal was present at the meeting (File)

New Delhi:

Union home minister Amit Shah held a meet today to review the coronavirus situation in the National Capital Region – comprising Delhi and parts of Haryana and Uttar Pradesh — where he stressed on more testing and early hospitalization to reduce mortality rates. His comments were directed especially at Uttar Pradesh Chief Minster Yogi Adityanath, who faced questions about the low rate of testing in his state.

Among the three states, the testing rate was lowest in Uttar Pradesh and at the meeting, there were questions on why Gautam Budh Nagar was only conducting 72 and Gaziabad 78 tests per million.
In comparison, Delhi is conducting testing 679 per million and Gurgaon 482.

Yogi Adityanath assured the Home Minister that he has already given instructions to ramp up testing among high-risk workers, who include rickshaw drivers and vegetable vendors.

The state currently has 6.88 lakh people across its quarantine facilities.

Mr Shah emphasized that the ramping up tests with the Rapid Antigen Test Kits will help in reduce infection transmission rate below 10 per cent as suggested by World Health Organization.

The officials were also asked to bring down the mortality rate in the NCR region which, besides Delhi, includes eight districts in two states. The districts in Haryana are Rohtak, Jhajjar, Sonipat,Gurgaon and Faridabad. The ones in Uttar Pradesh include Gautam Budh Nagar, Ghaziabad and Baghpat.

“When history is written, people will not remember how many recovered. They will remember how many people died during this pandemic,” Mr Shah told officials.