Mumbai: No target set, testing driven by demand, says Iqbal Chahal

MUMBAI: The BMC never set any targets for Covid testing and it was always demand driven, said municipal commissioner Iqbal Chahal. “Our single-day highest testing between March 2020 and February 10, 2021 when the second wave started was 24,400. The average was around 12,000 to 14,000,” Chahal told TOI.
Opposition leader Devendra Fadnavis has accused the BMC of reducing testing to cover up the actual number of Covid patients in the city. He also accused the BMC of trying to keep case numbers low by conducting more Rapid Antigen Tests rather than the more accurate RT-PCR test. “In Mumbai where RT-PCR testing capacity is one lakh per day, the average per day testing is around 34,191 of which 30% tests are RAT,” said Fadnavis.
Chahal, however, said, “During the second wave, we touched 56,000 tests (per day), but testing dropped to 45,000 on an average after the lockdown as testing in malls/corporate group testing stopped.”
The majority of the daily 45,000 tests was demand driven through home testing calls when positivity touched 31%, said the civic chief. Chahal said the demand for tests has naturally fallen as infection has come down. “Once positivity touches 3-4%, testing is likely to fall further,” he said.