COVID19: India conducts over 8 lakh tests per day for second day in a row
Aug 19, 2020
By Priyanka Sharma
New Delhi [India], Aug 19 : The Union Health Ministry on Wednesday said that India continues on its path of high testing with more than 8 lakh tests per day for the second day in a row.
The central government said that by following the "test, track and treat" strategy, India has been able to test more than 8 lakh COVID-19 samples for the second consecutive day.
"With a strong resolve to rapidly increase the number of tests done per day to touch 10 lakh/day testing capacity, 8,01,518 samples were tested in the last 24 hours," the Health Ministry said in a press statement.
While tests per million have seen a sharp rise to 23,002, the government said that the positivity rate remains stable at 8 per cent.
As testing is key to combat COVID-19 pandemic, so far India's cumulative testing has reached 3,17,42,782 as on date.
"It is only by aggressive testing that positive cases can be identified, their contacts tracked and isolated as well as prompt treatment can be ensured through timely medical care. The sustained level of high testing has played a key role in India's increasing rate of recovery, widening gap between the recovered and active cases, and also progressively declining fatality rate," stated the government press statement.
India followed the track of a graded and evolving strategy, steadily strengthening its nationwide network of labs in the public and private sectors.
According to the Health Ministry, starting from one lab in January 2020, the country has about 1,486 labs with 975 labs in the government sector and 511 in the private sector. These include 762 Real-Time RT PCR based testing labs, 607 TrueNat based testing labs and 117 CBNAAT based testing labs.
