Corona tests cross 1 million-mark in Assam, 2317 new cases in 24 hours

GUWAHATI: Assam completed more than a million Covid-19 tests on Tuesday by examining over 59,000 samples, which is the highest number of tests done in a single day in the state so far. At the same time, the state witnessed its biggest spike by registering 2317 confirmed cases in the last 24 hours.
Assam health minister Himanta Biswa Sarma in his tweet said, “Assam achieves an incredible feat of a million #COVID19 tests! Setting up 1st lab in Feb, which grew to 17 rapidly, our teams have done extraordinary work in reaching the 10 lakh mark in a little over 8 weeks. The last 1 lakh came in just 3 days. Remarkable!”
“In pursuit of our commitment to contain Covid-19 infections in our state, today we have completed 59,064 number of tests. By far, this is the highest number of tests we have achieved in a single day. For the next 10 days, we will continue with massive testing across the state,” he said in another tweet.
The health department had targeted to conduct 50,000 tests across the state on Tuesday.
The positivity rate in the state, however, remained around a low of over 5 %.
‘Assam’s recovery rate fourth best in country’
The health minister said, “The number will rise according to the number of tests. If we can remain careful for the next 10-15 days in Guwahati, certainly the cases in the city will decrease.”
Assam now has 11,735 active coronavirus cases, while 33,428 people have recovered after 1044 patients were discharged from hospitals in last 24 hours. The cumulative confirmed case count has reached 45,275, while 109 patients have died so far.
The minister said the state has the lowest mortality rate at 0.24%.
The recovery rate is 75%, which is the “fourth best in the country”. In testing, Assam ranks fifth with 27,544 tests per million. The current doubling rate of positive cases is 15.8 days from the earlier 12.1 days, he added.