Bengaluru, April 19 Fearing Karnataka could be far behind in Covid-19 numbers, the opposition Congress on Sunday urged the state government to conduct more tests to ascertain how many people were affected by the pandemic.
"Testing, testing and testing is our mantra to the state government, as Karnataka is way behind others in knowing how many more people are affected by the virus and need treatment even 25 days after the lockdown began on March 25," Congress leader and former chief minister Siddaramiah told reporters here.
Citing the World Health Organisation (WHO) recommendation for conducting 10,000 tests for a million or 10 lakh population, Siddaramaiah said the southern state was testing only 152 per million.
"Lifting lockdown without adequate testing may give false sense of hope which can turn against us," asserted Siddaramaiah after submitting a memorandum to chief minister B.S. Yediyurappa here on tackling the unprecedented crisis.
Extending the party's support to the state government in its fight against the deadly disease, Siddaramaiah should it was the opposition party's duty to present facts to step up efforts to contain the virus spread and address the grave economic fallout of the virus in the state.
Noting that the state was short of adequate personal protective equipment (PPEs) to the healthcare workforce, Siddaramaiah said the state government should also get more masks, hydroxychloroquine tablets and testing kits.
"The state government should also set up more centres in the state to do more Covid-19 tests before the extended lockdown is lifted on May 4," he reiterated.
"We told the chief minister to get more medicines, medical equipment and other healthcare needs than wait for the Centre to send as many," he added.
Assuring the Congress delegation of studying its memo and taking action, Yediydurappa tweeted that healthy discussions were held with the opposition leaders on minimizing the damage from the virus to the people and the state's economy.
Though Karnataka is 12th among states, with 390 positive cases, 111 discharged and 16 deaths till date, it is yet to ramp up testing for want of more kits to ensure the virus chain is broken before lifting the lockdown across the state.
( With inputs from IANS )