Flu cases 31,ministry to end parallel testing

With the samples of a nine-year-old boy,who arrived in Hyderabad on Sunday night from New Jersey through London....

With the samples of a nine-year-old boy,who arrived in Hyderabad on Sunday night from New Jersey through London,testing positive on Tuesday,the number of confirmed cases of H1N1 virus in India has gone up to 31. The boy was detected with flu-like symptoms at the Hyderabad airport and sent to the isolation ward at the chest hospital in the city. Officials are now trying to trace who he may have come in contact with.

On Tuesday,the National Institute of Communicable Diseases (NICD) received eight more samples of suspected cases from Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital in New Delhi,and two samples of Jalandhar students who had gone on an educational trip to NASA. The results are expected on Wednesday.

Meanwhile,the Union Health Ministry is planning to stop parallel testing at NICD and the National Institute of Virology (NIV) in Pune to avoid unnecessary wastage of time and money,said officials in the ministry. They said about Rs 20,000 is spent on testing each sample. There is no point in parallel testing,even the results are always the same. The officials have to send the samples by flight,which also delays the whole process, added the official.

Officials said an arrangement would now be made to send all samples from Maharashtra and nearby states to Pune and the rest to the NICD in Delhi. As of now,these are the only two laboratories capable of testing H1N1 samples in India.

‘Grave insult to wounded people’: Cong lashes out at PM Modi amid his first Manipur visit

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As Prime Minister Narendra Modi visits Manipur for the first time since ethnic violence hit the state in May 2023, the Congress on Saturday called it a “farce, tokenism, and a grave insult to a wounded people”.

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