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No new COVID-19 cases in Meghalaya

By Staff Correspondent

SHILLONG, April 20 - The State has not recorded any new case of COVID-19 during the past 48 hours, but testing of primary and secondary contacts of the first COVID-19 patient is far from over.

At present there are ten active COVID 19 cases in the State and Chief Minister Conrad Sangma informed today that they are all stable and quarantined.

There are 5,300 people who are primary and secondary contacts of the first COVID-19 patient. Till this evening, Sangma said the State has received results of 838 samples, out of which 714 results are negative and results of 113 are awaited.

One of the factors for the slow testing rate is because there is just one (NEIGRIHMS) testing facility in the State. Guwahati Medical College and Barpeta Medical College are the two testing centres, services of which the state has availed at this juncture.

One of the private hospitals here, Nazareth is waiting for accreditation from the concerned authorities at the Centre to function as an additional testing facility. Work is on to get the Pasteur Institute in the State capital to function as another testing centre.

The State Government is also in discussion to use the facility at the Indian Council for Agricultural Research at Umiam to function as a testing facility.

Sangma said the State Government approached ICAR three weeks back, but it refused permission.

The CM said the Government is working �on increasing testing facilities through other technologies.� He added that the State should be able to �double, if not triple� the testing facilities in the �next 48 hours or 72 hours.�

Meanwhile, the State Government disbursed an amount of Rs 3,000 to 1,617 students stranded across the State. He said the one-time cash benefit would be extended to the rest of the people from the State stranded across the country in due course of time.

Similarly, 1.2 lakh labourers, petty traders and daily wage earners have registered with the labour department and the State Government would give these people Rs 700 per week for the next three weeks.

On the other hand, due to restricted inter-state movement, availability of fresh vegetables and fish are in short supply as most of these come from Assam and elsewhere.

To facilitate better availability of these items, the State Government has eased transportation of agricultural and allied products of all kinds.

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