Chief Minister Vijay Rupani on Friday said he has asked officers to ramp up testing for Covid-19, even if doing so means a temporary increase in the number of cases, and said the state government is vigorously following the strategy of testing, tracing and treating to control the pandemic. Addressing a press conference after meeting officers of district administration, health department as well as Rajkot Municipal Corporation in Rajkot, Rupani said, “At the meeting of chief ministers yesterday, PM Narendra Modi underlined that during the last peak in November, we didn’t have Remdesivir nor vaccine or beds in such large numbers and yet we had managed to flatten the curve. Now, we have many tools at our disposal and the need of the hour is maximum testing. The objective is to find out cases in every block.” Rupani said. Incidentally, early this week, a vernacular daily had reported that staff of a primary health centre in Rajkot district was sending vials without real nasal swabs for testing to laboratories in order to keep the number of cases low. But the CM rejected the charge that the government was underreporting cases of Covid-19.
