184 new COVID-19 cases in Assam, tally rises to 4,694

(Eds: With updates)

Guwahati, Jun 17 () Assam reported 184 new COVID-19 cases on Wednesday, taking the state's total tally to 4,694, Health Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said.

He said 89 cases were reported late on Wednesday night while 95 were detected in the evening.

The state's COVID-19 recovery rate has improved to over 57 per cent with 231 patients discharged from hospitals on Wednesday, taking total recoveries to 2,642, which is higher than the number of active cases, Sarma said.

Eight people have died so far and there are 2,041 active cases in Assam, while three persons have migrated out, the minister said.

A second testing laboratory at the Guwahati Medical College Hospital (GMCH), the twelfth in the state, was inaugurated on Wednesday and the new VRDL lab with bio-safety cabinet has a capacity of conducting 400-500 tests daily, Sarma said.

He also inaugurated Digital Mammography Radiology Department at GMCH.

Also, Assam Targeted Surveillance Program (ATSP) was launched, Sarma said and termed it a crucial step towards combating COVID-19 effectively.

"We aim to conduct more than 50,000 random tests in a week's time, targeting vulnerable areas", the minister said.

Under ATSP, swab samples of people working in locations such as truck parking areas, loading and unloading centres, godowns, weighbridges and dhabas will be collected and tested.

The staff of hotels which are being used as institutional quarantine centres will also be tested along with frontline officials like police personnel. ATSP will also cover the family members and co-residents of homes of people who have been released from the institutional quarantine, Sarma said.

The health minister visited the Pandu FRU hospital here to monitor COVID-19 testing and said the future course of action for containment of the pandemic in Guwahati shall be based on these test results

The entire exercise was expected to be finished by June 27 and shall involve the deputy commissioners of each district who will ensure the availability of adequate facilities, the minister said.

In order to facilitate people to get themselves tested for COVID-19 without having to visit hospitals, some facilities have been identified by the health department where swab collection will be done for free, Sarma added.

The state has so far tested 2,35,214 swab samples.

Sarma also launched affordable and sterile Viral Transport Media (VTM) kits, RT-PCR kits and RNA isolation kits developed by the Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati.

He congratulated the IIT faculty for developing the kits and said, "We want to identify and contain this disease at an early stage and it is vital that we have all the crucial kits and materials so that our frontline healthcare workers and doctors who are doing a commendable job do not face any hurdle."

IIT, Guwahati, Director T G Sitharam said the institute has been at the forefront in the battle against COVID-19 and is supporting the Assam government in the fight.

The institute received the request to provide VTM kits from the National Health Mission director and "we immediately acted upon this request and began production of these sterile and affordable kits. The first batch has already been delivered to GMCH", he said.

In addition to the sterile SPILD-VTM kits, the Institute has also developed SPILD-RNA isolation kits and SPILD RT-PCR kits which are imperative to safely isolate the RNA from the novel coronavirus, he said.

Large scale production of all these COVID-19 diagnostic kits has commenced and would be delivered to the state officials as well as other testing centres across the country as and when the demand rises, Sitharam added. DG NSD NSD