BHUBANESWAR: Days after Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) asked states to increase testing in containment zones and hospitals in order to contain the spread of Covid-19, Odisha Government has decided to scale up daily testing.

At a high level meeting here on Friday, it was decided to conduct on an average 6500 tests a day in the State. The number of tests had come down to 3500 per day last month from an average 4000 tests in the last week of May.

While the State Government attributed the declining tests to the change in ICMR guideline, which had advised to focus more on symptomatic cases, service providers and frontline Covid warriors.

Additional Chief Secretary of Health department PK Mohapatra said new labs will be set up in five districts - Angul, Jharsuguda, Puri, Keonjhar and Kalahandi. SCB Medical College and Hospital at Cuttack and VIMSAR at Burla will be provided one more RTPCR machine each to ramp up testing.

“Since door-to-door surveillance has been intensified across the State, we expect more symptomatic cases to come up. Surveillance will continue till the end of this month. Accordingly, we are in the process of augmenting the facilities so that no sample is left without a test beyond 48 hours of collection,” he informed. The State has 16 Government labs and six private labs.

While all the State-run labs and four private labs have RT-PCR test facility, two others use CB-NAAT machines. Districts have been tagged with the State-run labs for better coordination.

As many as 6851 tests were conducted in the last 24 hours, the highest so far on a single day. A total 2,81,523 tests have been carried out in the State in the last four months.