Govt needs to act quickly on migrant front; if it does not, there will be social unrest soon: Rahul Gandhi

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Thursday held a press meet via video-conferencing where he said that government’s testing level for coronavirus is not up to the mark and is neither strategic. He also said that lockdown is just a pause button, and not a solution to check the spread of Covid-19. He Said, If you want to fight the virus, you've to increase the testing dramatically & your testing has to go from chasing the virus to moving ahead of it. You've to move to random testing and pre-empt where the virus is moving.

“We are in a very serious situation. People of India and parties need to work together,” Gandhi said in his opening remarks. “I have been speaking to large number of experts, both in India and abroad, as well as outside the government who have a better understanding of what is going on.

Key Points

• We need to understand that lockdown is a pause button, it’s not a solution to coronavirus,” he further said. “When we come out of the lockdown, the virus will again begins its work. So we need to have a strategy,” said Gandhi. Speaking on Covid-19 testing in India, he said, There is a need to ramp up your testing facility, to prepare our hospitals. The biggest weapon in fight against Covid-19 is testing - it will tell us where the virus is moving, so you can understand where it is going, so you can isolate it.” “Our testing is not enough to understand where the virus is moving, and it has to go from chasing the virus to getting ahead of it,” added the Congress leader.
• Gandhi has been critical of the Centre’s handling of coronavirus outbreak. Our testing rate is 199 out of a million, all tests that we've done in last 72 days, works out to approx average of 350 tests per district.
• Lockdown is in no way a solution to the COVID19. Lockdown is like a pause button. When we come out of the lockdown, the virus is going to start its work again.
• Now we've reached a level, where we are in an emergency situation. India must unite & fight against it. My main suggestion is that blunt instruments must not be used. We must work strategically. Lockdown has not resolved the problem, it has only postponed the problem.
• If you want to fight the virus, you've to increase the testing dramatically & your testing has to go from chasing the virus to moving ahead of it. You've to move to random testing and pre-empt where the virus is moving. Push testing aggressively and use testing strategically, to assist the states in their fight, use it not to just track patients but to create a map of India to see where the virus is moving.
• I disagree with Narendra Modi with a lot of issues but now is not the time to fight. Unite and fight the virus

Before this on Wednesday, he demanded that emergency ration cards should be issued to those facing a shortage of foodgrains during the lockdown enforced to contain coronavirus.In a tweet, he had said lakhs of people were unable to take benefit of the public distribution system (PDS) as they do not have ration cards. Earlier this month, he had taken a dig at the BJP-led government over the way lockdown was enforced, saying no country with such a huge number of migrant labourers has attempted it without arranging for their stay and food. With 941 more Covid-19 cases in the last 24 hours, India’s coronavirus tally crossed the 12,000 mark with the tally reading at 12,380 cases, said the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on Thursday.