In the wake of 73 confirmed cases of coronavirus in India so far, the Union health ministry has made functional 52 laboratories for testing samples while 57 labs have been designated for helping in sample collection for Covid-19 to enhance capacity for diagnosis and detection of the disease. "Following the increase in load of screening samples from suspected cases with symptoms and travel history to the affected countries, the department of health research/ICMR has commissioned 52 laboratories for COVID-19 testing in India," an official said.
According to data on the Union health ministry's website, of the 142 COVID cases reported in the country till 8 am on Tuesday, 115 were from Kerala.
India currently does not have any XBB 1.5 variant-based vaccines available.
Taking exception to Health Minister Harsh Vardhan not mentioning the death of healthcare workers due to Covid-19 in his statement in Parliament, the Indian Medical Association has published a list of 382 doctors who died due to the viral disease and demanded that they be treated as "martyrs".
Still admitted at the trauma centre, undergraduate Mohammad Tazeen, 19, alleged that he and several others faced a merciless attack" by police. He said he was dragged out of the AMU guest house number 3, thrashed there and again at the Malkhan Singh Hospital, "where nearly 20 of us were taken in police vans supposedly for treatment".
'The spread of barbarity in Muzaffarnagar's villages makes administrative complicity so very evident that your government is rightly alleged to be imitating what the Modi-led administration did in Gujarat in 2002,' Mohammad Sajjad tells UP Minister Azam Khan.
