India crosses 10 lakh daily Covid tests milestone within month of boosting screening process

New Delhi: India has crossed the milestone of conducting 10 lakh (1 million) tests in a day for the novel coronavirus, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare said Saturday.

As of 8 am 22 August, India tested 10,23,836 tests, taking its total tally to over 3 crore (3,44,91,073). India crossed the milestone just a day after its testing had dropped by a lakh.

The ministry lauded the efforts of state governments for aggressively testing, pushing India past its target of conducting 10 lakh tests daily.

The tests brought India’s Covid-19 case total to 29,75,701 cases, with 55,794 deaths and 22,22,577 recoveries.

Million milestone

Testing had exponentially been ramped up in the past month. According to data with the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), accessed by ThePrint, daily tests tripled in the last month, going from 3,43,240 on 21 July to 10,23,450 on 21 August. In the month of August, daily tests increased by over a double from 4,63,171 tests on 1 August to 10,23,450 on 21 August.

According to data provided by the health ministry, daily tests increased from 7,46,608 on 16 August to 10,23,836 tests on 22 August. However, before touching the 10 lakh-mark, daily tests had dropped by a lakh — to 8,05,985 Friday from 9,18,470 tests Thursday.

The data also showed that average weekly tests increased through the month of August. According to the ministry, average weekly tests increased from 5,65,060 in the week of 1-7 August to 7,00,860 in the week of 8-14 August, before touching a weekly average of 8,24,689 in the week between 15 August and 21 August.

Centre lauds states

The health ministry said the aggressive testing had been a concerted effort between the Centre and all states and UTs.

“Combined with enhanced testing, policy decisions of the Centre and the States/UTs have facilitated easy testing across the country. This has boosted the daily testing capacity,” the ministry said in a statement.

The ministry also said that improved numbers of testing became possible due to an enhanced diagnostic lab network, including both government and private labs, in the country. As of 22 August, India had a total of 778 RT-PCR labs, 615 TrueNat labs and 118 CBNAAT-based testing labs in the country.

ICMR data analysed by ThePrint revealed that due to the ramped up testing facilities, test results uploaded by government labs increased to 9,16,393 on 21 August from 2,65,131 on 21 July. In the same period, test results uploaded by private labs increased to 1,06,980 from 78,112.

The ministry said that while aggressive testing will lead to an increase in positivity rate, continued testing will bring down the positivity rate as well.

“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,” said the government.

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