UP achieves single-day peak of 45,000 Covid-19 tests

LUCKNOW: Uttar Pradesh on Wednesday became the state conducting maximum number of tests in a single day. “As many as 45,302 tests were conducted by the labs in UP in the past 24 hours. Till now, Tamil Nadu held the record with about 44,000 tests,” said secretary to chief minister, Alok Kumar adding, “We now look forward to 50,000 tests per daymark.”
The Tamil Nadu government official Covid-19 bulletin revealed that over 41,382 tests were done in the southern state in the past 24 hours.
Later, additional chief secretary, health and family welfare, Amit Mohan Prasad said that UP ranked number three in the country in terms of total number of coronavirus tests conducted so far. “With 12,77,241 tests UP comes after Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu,” he said.
Data revealed that while Tamil Nadu has conducted over 17 lakh so far, Maharashtra has undertaken over 14 lakh tests till Wednesday. Government officials in UP are confident that UP will overtake Maharashtra in a week or ten days. “Very soon, may be in a week or so, UP will rank number two in cumulative testing,” said additional chief secretary home and information, Awanish Awasthi.
Officials said that UP was doing well in terms of ‘tests per positive persons’ - an important indicator to understand the extent of spread of the infection in a place. “On this count, Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh were ahead of UP but we will be number two on this count in a week,” Prasad said.
Alok Kumar sais that as of now, UP was testing over 30 persons for every positive case while Andhra Pradesh was screening 40 while Rajasthan was testing 43 persons against a single covid-19 positive person.
Officials also said that UP’s testing indicated that the strategy was working well. “Our case positivity rate despite the rising numbers remained below 4% which is well within the safe range of 3-12%. However, the numbers only indicate that people of the state will have to continue to contribute towards covid-19 prevention as we work towards better testing and management,” Kumar stated.
Meanwhile, Awasthi said that high burden Ghaziabad will soon have a functional dedicated lab to conduct coronavirus tests. Health department chief Prasad visited the NCR district to inspect and complete the formalities for the lab earlier this week.