Low testing behind drop in COVID-19 cases: Fadnavis

Mumbai, Apr 28: Former chief minister of Maharashtra said that the drop in COVID-19 cases in Maharashtra is due to low testing.

In a tweet in Marathi, Fadnavis wrote, " decreased number of tests in the states including Mumbai, low number of RT-PCR tests, increased risk of infection, 20 per cent of the total deaths in the state are in Mumbai, old records are not updated and accurate information is not available for the fight against COVID-19."

Further Fadnavis in a letter written to the Chief Minister of Maharashtra, Uddhav Thackeray said, " I request you not to fall prey in creating virtual pictures just by portraying a fall in daily cases in the state. Only accurate infection rate, proper testing can provide accurate data of COVID-1 infected patients.

An ANI report while quoting the letter said, "I had shared with you consistently, with complete statistics, about how low the number of tests is being carried out, even in the first wave of COVID-19 last year. Today, when the intensity of the second wave is high, I consider it my duty to bring some issues to your notice once again. There have been very few tests in Mumbai in the last 8 days. 36,556 on April 19, 45,350 on April 20, 47,270 on April 21, 46,874 on April 22, 41,826 on April 23, 39,584 on April 24, 40,298 on 25 April and as of April 26, 28,338 such tests had been performed. Its average is 40,760."

He further said in the letter, "with a 40-lakh population, Nagpur is conducting over 26 thousand tests every day. Pune is also doing higher tests with their 68-lakh population. But Mumbai, which has a 4 times higher population than these two cities can't even reach an average of 40,000 tests every day."