Heena Sharma Blog

  A presentation suggesting the setting up of sewage and air surveillance systems in Parliament to detect the prevalence of COVID-19 was made before Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu on Tuesday. Elaborating on the relevance of sewage surveillance in his presentation, Director General of Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) Shekhar C Mande said, "COVID-19 patients shed SAR-CoV-2 in stools. Apart from symptomatic individuals, asymptomatic people also shed the virus in their stools." Sewage surveillance provides a qualitative as well as a quantitative estimate of the number of people infected in a population and could be used to understand the progression of COVID-19 even when mass scale tests for individuals are not possible, an official statement said quoting the CSIR chief. It is a measure to comprehensively monitor the prevalence of the disease in communities in real time, Mande said. Read More

As the Centre weighs the economic costs of the 21-day lockdown , and a calibrated exit from it April 14 onwards, Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu on Tuesday said health concerns should take precedence over that of economic stabilisation in deciding the post-lockdown roadmap. In a statement on the completion of two weeks of the lockdown today, Naidu said the third week of the lockdown, which starts Wednesday, would be crucial for decision making on the exit. The Vice President said that the data regarding the extent and rate of spread of virus infection will have a bearing on the exit strategy. He appealed to the people to abide by whatever decision follows on April 14, and cooperate with the same spirit that has so far been demonstrated even if hardships were to continue after April 14. Read More