Centre needs to acknowledge community spread, ramp-up testing: Sanjay Singh

AAP leader Sanjay Singh has advised the Centre to accept that community spread of the coronavirus is happening and follow Delhi's lead in containing the virus by ramping-up testing "on a large scale"

The Centre needs to accept that community spread of the coronavirus is happening in the country and follow Delhi's lead in containing the virus by ramping-up testing "on a large scale", senior AAP leader Sanjay Singh said on Monday.

The Rajya Sabha MP said people are not realising that the community spread is underway and hence contracting the virus. "(If) you are not able to find information on the source of the infection so that is community spread," he said at a press briefing.

"The Centre needs to accept that community spread is taking place and ramp-up testing on a large scale and more testing kits must be made available. They must replicate what the Delhi government did," Singh said.

Hitting back at Singh, Delhi BJP General-Secretary Rajesh Bhatia said that AAP is "running away" from its responsibilities in Delhi.

"First a man died in waterlogging in the city on Sunday. When we questioned them, they said the Kejriwal government was busy handling coronavirus, so it could not pay attention to desilting of drains.

"Now, they are saying there is community spread, if it is so what were they doing to stop it. The thing is COVID situation had gone out of Delhi government's hands and was brought under control by Union Home Minister Amit Shah," Bhatia said.

Singh also said admitting that there is a community spread of the virus would require testing to be done on a large scale.

"In terms of testing if you compare, India is far behind. In the US, 1,47,000 tests are conducted per million while in Russia over 1 lakh tests are done per million," he said.

"Meanwhile in India, just 9,000-10,000 tests per million are being conducted. It means enough tests are not being conducted and the country is being run on the formula of 'no testing-no cases and no FIR-no crime'. Two states of UP and Bihar are the biggest examples in this respect where testing is being carried out just for namesake," he said.