-Livemint.com ICMR advises states not to use the testing kits for the next two days, saying it will issue an advisory after medical teams carry out field validation of the kits NEW DELHI: Test kits for the detection and surveillance of covid-19 cases in India that have apparently been found faulty had been procured by the Indian Council of Medical Research from China from Chinese vendors approved by Chinese authorities, a senior...

-NDTV It is difficult to detect asymptomatic cases and they can be found out only after tracing the contacts of people who have beentested positive, the top scientist said, adding that testing everyone is almost impossible. New Delhi: 80 per cent of people with coronavirus in India are asymptomatic, or do not show symptoms of the infection, and this is matter of worry, a senior scientist at the country's top medical research...

-The Hindu Lockdowns alone can’t be effective unless combined with other health measures, says the WHO Chief Scientist. Dr. Soumya Swaminathan, Chief Scientist at the World Health Organisation, tells The Hindu in an interview that the fight against COVID-19 is likely to be long-term, and lockdowns alone cannot be effective unless combined with other public health measures. Dr. Swaminathan, who has worked in research on tuberculosis and HIV for 30 years, was...

-The Indian Express Scientific estimates suggest that without social distancing measures, the reproductive rate would have been 2.5 people per day, but with the lockdown, we have been able to reduce social exposure by over 75%, leading to an infection rate of around 0.625 persons per day.” New Delhi: Exposing lack of coordination within the government, the Health Ministry has rejected a statement made by the Ministry of External Affairs, which had...

-The Indian Express ICMR on coronavirus testing: India has conducted roughly 6,000 tests so far, lower than the US (8,000), Japan (9,600), France (12,000), the UK (13,000), and Italy (23,000). South Korea has conducted as many as 2 lakh, which experts see as the reason for their significantly declining numbers. As each country debates own testing strategy to combat Covid-19, the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) has decided to monitor community...