Eatala Rajender fires salvo at Centre over funding to Telangana

Hyderabad: Telangana government has slammed the Centre for not giving enough funds to combat Covid-19 but instead just washing off his hands with calls to claps hands or light diyas to people. Health Minister Eatala Rajender said that the first COBOS 8800 machine (that can conduct nearly 3500 to 4000 Covid tests a day) ordered by Telangana was diverted to West Bengal by the Centre.

The German firm Roche had written a letter to TSMSIDC that the machine was diverted to NICED, West Bengal after receiving a letter from ICMR to this effect.

Eatala Rajender said that Telangana was the first state in the country to give an order to procure three COBOS machines. However, before the first one was delivered, Centre played a spoilsport, he fumed.

As of now 2290 tests are being done in government labs in Telangana and if this German device had reached the state by now the daily cases would have increased to over 6200 per day. Eatala Rajender said that they are expecting delivery of another device by Roche in a week to ten days time after which sample tests would be ramped up considerably, he said. Ignoring such actions by the Centre, the state BJP is indulging in mudslinging on Telangana government and accusing it of low testing, the Minister said.

He instructed the Health Department to effectively run telemedicine to benefit home isolation patients.