The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) on Tuesday launched its Universal Testing mission in a bid to increase testing.
The initiative will laboratories to test patients based on e-subscriptions. This will also allow patients to get tested at home without taking the risk to step out, the Times of India reported.
Apart from this, the municipal agency also said that people above 70 years of age can get themselves tested without a prescription. If tested positive, caretakers who are high-risk individuals can
Under the Universal Testing mission, BMC is producing one lakh testing kits to screen people in high-risk areas and government-run hospitals. These kits will also be used for emergency or trauma cases and pregnant women heading into delivery rooms.
“In order to achieve #MissionZero, @mybmc has now launched 'Mission Universal Testing'
1 lakh antigen testing kits designed to provide results in 30 min will be made available at our hospitals and to all high-risk contacts quarantined in our CCC's,” BMC tweeted from their official account.
This will help the civic body ramp up testing to 6500 tests a day. Doctors will use these kits to test people in hotspots in mobile ambulances, the report said.
BMC has also permitted people to get themselves tested at any laboratory irrespective of their areas to reduce the load on specific labs in hotspots.
Symptomatic individuals who test negative based on this test will need to undergo the regular RT-PCR test for confirmation, an official had said as per the report.
The Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM)earlier this week had launched its Mission Zero, a rapid action plan to break the chain of Covid-19 in high-risk areas.
Under the revised strategy for tackling Covid-19 spread in the eastern and western suburbs of Mumbai, it had commenced door-to-door screening of residents, for checking symptoms associated with the infection.
Areas specifically targeted under the mission include Borivali, Dahisar, Malad, Kandivali of western suburbs and Bhandup and Mulund in eastern suburbs.
So far, over 24,58,168 houses have visited for survey according to the official count published by the municipal agency.