Rahul Gandhi pitches for aggressive testing to defeat COVID-19

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Thursday strongly pitched for aggressively expanding coronavirus testing across the country and adopting it as a "strategic" instrument to "defeat" the pandemic.

Addressing a press conference via video conference, Gandhi also said the entire country has to fight the crisis "unitedly" and there is need to grant adequate resources to the states to help them deal with it in a "nuanced" manner.

Instead of conducting tests on the basis of suspected cases, India must adopt a strategy and bring out an architecture under which testing should be expanded exponentially and find out where the country stands, the Congress leader said.

He said the lockdown is not a solution to the pandemic and the time must be utilised to significantly bolster the existing medical infrastructure as well as take steps to deal with the worrying economic fall out.

"The lockdown is in no way a solution to COVID-19. It is like a pause button. We need to ramp up our medical infrastructure, testing facilities...We need to develop an architecture to deal with the crisis," he said.

Gandhi insisted that there is need for devolution of powers to states to help them effectively deal with the situation. He added that a "blunt instrument" should not be used and what is needed is a "nuanced" and strategic approach.

He also said there is need to use the available resources carefully.