50% People Don't Wear A Mask: Health Ministry Cites Study

"Of the 50 per cent wearing a mask, 64 per cent cover their mouth but not nose, 20 per cent have it on chin and 2 per cent mask on neck," ICMR Director General Balram Bhargava said, adding that 2,000 people were surveyed across 25 cities for the study.

The government aims to ramp up India's daily testing capacity for COVID-19 to 45 lakh by end of June from the current capacity of 16-20 lakh per day, the Centre said on Thursday as a record 20.55 lakh tests were conducted in a span of 24 hours. On augmenting testing for COVID-19 while ICMR has so far approved a home-based rapid antigen testing (RAT) kit manufactured by Mylab Discovery Solutions Ltd, Pune, ICMR Director General Balram Bhargava said kits by three more companies are in pipeline and likely to get the approval within a week. Mr Bhargava said kits for home testing will be available in market in 3-4 days. Besides, Mr Bhargava said for ramping up capacity the ICMR has validated more than 105 Rapid Antigen Tests companies and approved 41 of them.