RJD, Congress join hands to slam Bihar government

PATNA: A day after the state government claimed to have conducted over one lakh Covid-19 tests in a day, opposition leaders criticised it for conducting disproportionately large chunk of the tests using rapid antigen kit and demanded that majority of tests should be done using the more accurate RT-PCR method.
According to leader of opposition Tejashwi Prasad Yadav, only 8% of the tests were being done through the RT-PCR method. Citing the example of Tamil Nadu which is conducting 100% RT-PCR tests, Tejashwi said, “All I want to know is what has the state government done in the past five months. How come other states have increased their testing capacity and enhanced their hospital facilities.”
He also shared a letter from the Bihar Medical Service Corporation Limited dated June 24, in which the government had cancelled the order of Cobas 8800. “Health minister Mangal Pandey had himself announced that Cobas 8800 was being procured and it could conduct 36,000 tests through RT-PCR in a day. First of all it took the government such a long time to make an order which they did in May and then they cancelled it in June. Now they are planning to get this machine from a foreign country,” alleged Tejashwi.
He further said he stood firm on his allegation against the health minister regarding false Covid-19 data. “A state with 12 crore population has only 10,500 beds with oxygen, which should be at least one lakh now,” he added.
Congress MLC Prem Chandra Mishra, on the other hand, raised doubts over the number of positive cases in comparison to the total number of tests being conducted. He said the government was intentionally trying to show a low positivity rate to present a wrong picture to the Election Commission to get the polls conducted.
“Almost a fortnight back, when around ten thousand tests were conducted, that time we were getting around 3,000 positive cases. But now when one lakh tests are being done in a day, positive cases have been fixed around four thousand. This is a dangerous game to show suppressed figures of infection and death. People of Bihar are being fooled,” said Mishra.
He further said the government’s data showing the death figure does not incorporate those dying in private hospitals. He also expressed concern over the situation at Bans Ghat because of non-functional electric crematorium.