The Delhi government brought down the cost of Covid-19 tests at private labs, with RT-PCR and RAT tests to now cost Rs 300, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said on Wednesday.

As per the fresh notification issued by the Centre, conventional RT-PCR tests wherein samples are collected by the government teams and collected from the collection sites by private sector labs as requisitioned by the districts/hospitals will now cost Rs 300.

Conventional RT-PCR test wherein samples are collected by private lab teams for govemment and processed further at their lab will cost Rs 400.

The cost of conventional RT-PCR test wherein individuals give their samples at the Labs/Private Hospitals/Collection facilities for paid testing at their own expense (including all charges-sample collection and testing cost at the site) will now cost Rs 500.

Conventional RT PCR Test wherein samples are collected through Home visits (including all charges-visit, samples collection and testing cost) will be charged Rs 700.

The cost of the Rapid Antigen detection Test (RAT) has now been fixed at Rs 300.

Meanwhile, it may be noted that in Delhi, where the weekly cases had dropped to this year’s lowest count of 381 in the week before last, saw a 15 per cent rise in infections. Delhi recorded 440 fresh cases last week. In Haryana as well, a minor rise of two per cent was recorded.

While these spikes are marginal in absolute numbers, it’s significant that these states had been registering a fall in infections till the week before last.

Delhi on Tuesday saw a marginal decline in daily Covid-19 caseload with 50 fresh cases. With this, Delhi’s infection tally rose to 14,36,451, out of which 14,10,874 have recovered from the disease while 25,058 have succumbed to the virus.