Congress Demands COVID-19 Tests for all at All-Party Meet

Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Monday held an all-partymeeting to discuss the management of the coronavirus situation in the NationalCapital Region, which includes Delhi and parts of Uttar Pradesh and parts ofHaryana.

The meeting comes a day after he held a high-level meeting withDelhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, following which he laid out a number ofmeasures to battle the capital's COVID-19 crisis.

The parties attending the meeting at the North Block include Delhi's ruling Aam Aadmi Party, the Congress, BJP, Mayawati's Bahujan Samaj Party, and Akhilesh Yadav's Samajwadi Party.

Delhi is the state with the third-highest COVID-19 count afterMaharashtra and Tamil Nadu with 41,182  cases and the number of deaths dueto the disease climbed to 1,327.

At the meeting, the Congress demanded that COVID-19 testing tobe provided to all and that Rs 10,000 be paid to every family in which amember is infected or in a containment zone. The party also demanded thatmedical students in their fourth year be used as non-permanent residentdoctors.

"Union Home Minister Amit Shah has said that by June 20, the Delhi government will start conducting 18,000 COVID-19 tests per day," Delhi BJP chief Adesh Kumar Gupta said while quoted by news agency ANI.

On Sunday, Amit Shah had met Kejriwal and announced a series of measures for Delhi. Key decisions include tripling the number of tests within the next six days and the center providing Delhi with 500 train coaches to boost the number of beds for coronavirus patients. A committee will submit its report today on reducing the cost of COVID-19 treatment and costs. Shah also announced that COVID-19 tests would be started at every polling station in the containment zones in Delhi and a comprehensive house-to-house health survey would be conducted in the hotspots for contact tracing.