As the number of positive coronavirus cases rose to 114 Monday, the government prohibited entry of passengers from EU countries, Turkey and the UK from March 18 till March 31. The Union health ministry also said four new coronavirus cases — one each from Odisha, Jammu & Kashmir, Ladakh and Kerala — have been reported. On March 11, the World Health Organisation officially declared coronavirus a pandemic as it has spread globally and claimed over 5,000 lives, infecting more than 31,000 people. Many states in India have gone into shutdown mode, closing all schools, public parks, malls and theatres, in order to fight the public health emergency. Various countries have adopted various models for addressing community transmission, or for preventing it. For the time being, India has chosen to follow the Italian model of lockdown, rather than the South Korean model of free testing. For India, massive free testing in a country of 135 crore would need humongous resources. Here's a list of 63 testing sites for COVID-19: Currently, 63 laboratories are functional to test COVID-19 and 9 more laboratories will start functioning shortly. In Andhra Pradesh, labs at Sri Venkateswara Institute of Medical Sciences in Tirupati, Andhra Medical College in Visakhapatnam and GMC, Anantapur have been made operational while in Assam, labs at Gauhati Medical College in Guwahati and Regional Medical Research Centre, Dibrugarh have been activated. In Delhi, the facility of sample testing has been made available at AIIMS and the National Centre for Disease Control while in Gujarat, the facilities are available in BJ Medical College in Ahmedabad and M.P. Shah Government Medical College in Jamnagar.
