Jain's letter on COVID-19 testing 'baseless, false': MHA

New Delhi, Aug 27 The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) on Thursday struck back at the Delhi government, refuting allegations levelled by it regarding COVID-19 testing in the national capital.

Responding to the letter written by the Delhi Health Minister dated August 27 which is addressed to the Union Home Secretary, the MHA said, "The allegation raised in the letter...is false and baseless."

It further said that it was after the intervention of Union Home Minister Amit Shah that the daily tests in Delhi, which were averaging around 4,000 per day till mid-June, 2020, have gone up to around 18-20,000 per day in a calibrated manner.

The marked improvement in the COVID-19 situation in Delhi has been possible due to this enhanced testing and other containment measures, the MHA said.

A series of tweets by the MHA further said, "The letter of the Delhi Health Minister has annexed a note of the officers of the Delhi Govt. It may be noted that this note has made no mention whatsoever of any instruction of MHA on the matter of increase in testing in Delhi."

"The note has only proposed that the views of an Expert Committee headed by Dr V.K. Paul may be taken on the proposed enhancement in testing in Delhi, for technical guidance on various issues such as mix of RT-PCR and Rapid Antigen, categories of geographic areas and demographics etc," the MHA said further.

The MHA also said that any allegation that it is putting pressure on the Delhi government not to increase testing in Delhi is absolutely without any basis.

Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain in his letter to Union Home Secretary Ajay Bhalla alleged that the Union Home Ministry is "intervening and putting pressure on officers of Delhi government", to prevent increasing of COVID-19 tests to 40,000 in the city.

Jain claimed that the Delhi government has been able to control coronavirus by working on the policy of more and more testing to identify and isolate COVID-19 patients.

( With inputs from IANS )