More on Covid-19

NEW DELHI: In a letter to President Ram Nath Kovind, CPM general secretary Sitaram Yechury has appealed to him that care should be taken to ensure that the Tablighi Jamaat congregation incident is not made into an excuse to target the Muslim community.In the letter, Yechury also urged Kovind to see to it that significant part of the funds collected under PM Cares are transferred to the state governments."Attempts are being made to blame a particular community for the spread of the virus. The organisers of Tablighi were very irresponsible. This, however, cannot be the excuse to target the Muslim community as a whole. Unless stopped, this will disrupt the people's united struggle against Covid pandemic," he said.He also sought the President's intervention to merge this newly created fund with the Prime Minister's National Relief Fund (PMNRF)."Further, as the delivery of health is primarily the responsibility of state governments, bulk of this fund should be transferred to the respective states to ensure effective implementation of measures to fight Covid-19," he said.Raising the issue of shortage of medical kits, Yechury said aggressive augmentation of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) must be undertaken immediately."It is being universally commented that the testing rate in India is one of, if not, the lowest in the world. As opposed to 7,659 per million in South Korea, in India the figures is an abysmal low of 32. This is extremely dangerous for the future. The country needs to test as extensively as possible, identify the clusters where the virus is being transmitted, isolate them and enforce lockdown in those areasÂ and not countrywide," he said.