Maharashtra Government caps maximum price for COVID-19 tests, home visit cost also reduced

In a major reprieve, Maharashtra government on Saturday, has capped the maximum price for COVID-19 tests (RT-PCR) at Rs 2200. Moreover, the maximum price for testing by collecting samples from home has been capped at Rs 2800. Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) had capped the maximum testing price at Rs 4500 but had then removed the all-India cap.

ICMR tells states to fix Covid testing price with private labs after removing Rs 4,500 cap

Maharashtra caps testing price at Rs 2200

TN govt caps COVID-19 treatment charges in private hospitals

Tamil Nadu caps testing prices

On June 8, the Tamil Nadu government capped the cost of testing to ₹3,000  and an additional Rs 500 for a home visit. The state had also capped the charges for COVID-19 treatment in private hospitals across the state.  The per-day charges for treatment in Intensive Care Units shall not exceed Rs 15,000 and in general wards, for asymptomatic people and those with mild symptoms, the maximum is Rs 7,500, the government said.

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ICMR removes testing price cap

On May 26, the ICMR had removed the price cap of Rs 4,500 for the real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test used to detect COVID-19, asking states and UTs to arrive on "mutually agreeable" rates for the test with private labs. It had then advised states and UTs to come up with a price cap for COVID-19 testing in consultation with private labs. India has currently tested 55,07,182 samples with 1,43,737 being tested in the past 24 hours.

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Maharashtra's COVID crisis

Maharashtra CM Uddhav Thackeray has clarified that the state government had not re-announced the lockdown and urged the people to follow the government guideline on safety and precautions against COVID-19. Moreover, to ease the burden on the police, Maharashtra Minister Rajesh Tope has announced a change in denotification of a COVID-19 containment zone - if no new infected patient is found there for 14 days in a row instead of the earlier protocol of 28 days. The Centre has asked the state to add additional ICU beds as 90% of the Mumbai's ICU beds were filled. The BMC chief has assured that 300 beds will be added within a week.

Maharashtra has 95 laboratories - 53 govt labs, 42 private labs which have tested 6,24,977 samples. Of these 1,01,141 samples have tested positive taking the state test positivity rate to 16.18%. Currently, Maharashtra has 1,01,141 COVID-19 cases with 3717 deaths - Mumbai amounts to 55,451 cases and 2044