Bihar Govt Instructs Schools To Use Mid-day Meal Food Grains To Feed People In Quarantine Amid Rising COVID-19 Cases

The Bihar Education Department in an attempt to tackle the challenge of providing quality food to people under quarantine has instructed the schools to use the food grains meant for mid-day meal scheme for preparing meals.

In a letter to all District Magistrates and District Education Officers, the government and government-aided schools that are being used as quarantine centres have been asked to follow the orders amid the coronavirus pandemic.

In the letter, RK Mahajan, Additional Chief Secretary, Bihar Education Department stated that the mid-day meal scheme is not active due to the lockdown and the district administration will provide food grains to schools once schools reopen.

With 2,394 coronavirus cases, Bihar entered the top ten states which have been most affected by the deadly virus.

According to the Hindustan Times, the Centre is to provide additional testing equipment to the state to ramp up the testing for novel coronavirus as the number of reported cases grew by an average of 13 per cent every day in the last one week.

Reportedly, Bihar's case doubling period was eight days (as on May 19) against the national average of 13.28 days. It was testing 466 out of every 1 million people, as of May 21.

Also, at the beginning of the month, the state had less than 450 cases. The migrants being ferried from different states have been reported to be the reason for the rise in the number of cases.

Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar said that his government has resolved to provide employment to all migrant workers, who have returned, within the state.

He has also reportedly asked his officers to ramp testing from an average 2,000 to 10,000 per day.

Also Read: India Reports 6,767 New Infections, 147 Fatalities In Last 24 Hours, Total COVID-19 Cases Breach 1.31 lakh Mark