New Delhi: The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) on Saturday (August 22, 2020) said that there were more than 1 million COVID-19 tests across India in the past 24 hours.
"Keeping to its promise of exponentially increasing the daily COVID-19 tests to 10 lakhs, India has crossed the significant milestone in its fight against COVID today. In a testament to the determined, focussed, consistent and coordinated efforts of the Centre and the State/UT governments, India has conducted 1 million tests in the past 24 hours. With 10,23,836 tests done yesterday, India has achieved its resolve to test 10 lakh samples daily, said the MoHFW.
As per the MoHFW latest health bulletin, the cumulative COVID-19 tests have now been increased to 3,44,91,073.
"The number of daily tests has been increasing in a steep climb. Average daily tests during the past three weeks also strongly depict the progress made in the enhancement of COVID-19 tests across the country," said the MoHFW.
They added, "As has been reported from States/UTs that have pushed ahead with aggressive testing, there is a commensurate decline in the positivity rate. Although higher number of tests will initially lead to a rise in the positivity rate, it will eventually lower when combined with other measures such as prompt isolation, efficient tracking, and timely effective and clinical management."
According to the Indian Council of Medical Research [ICMR], India has been conducting average 8,89,935 testing in last 5 days and has been testing around 74.7 people per lakh population which is much higher than WHO’s guidelines of testing 14 people per lakh population.
Dr Balram Bhargava, Director General, ICMR said, "In a diverse country like India, for equitable access to testing, optimization of resources based on the evolving epidemic was an essential part of the sustainable scaling up. Due to the concerted, focused and collaborative efforts of the Centre, State/UT government along with dedicated support of lakhs of front-line workers we have ensured the successful implementation of TESTING aggressively, TRACKING comprehensively & TREATING efficiently which has enabled us to rapidly increase the number of tests done per day."
Notably, India now has a strong network of 1511 labs comprising 983 labs in the government sector and 528 private labs.
These include:
• Real-Time RT PCR based testing labs: 778 (Govt: 458 + Private: 320)
• TrueNat based testing labs: 615 (Govt: 491 + Private: 124)
• CBNAAT based testing labs: 118 (Govt: 34 + Private: 84)
On the other hand, India also recorded the highest single-day peak of 63,613 COVID-19 recoveries in the past 24 hours.
India’s total coronavirus recoveries have now increased to 22,22,577, while the number of active cases stands at 6,97,330.
Meanwhile, the COVID-19 death count by Saturday morning has risen to 55,794.
