WHO advises comprehensive surveillance for suspected COVID-19 cases
Jul 15, 2020
New Delhi [India], July 15 : The World Health Organisation (WHO) in its Guidance Note on Public Health Criteria to Adjust Public Health and Social Measures in the Context of COVID-19 has advised comprehensive surveillance of suspected cases.
While explaining the concept of 'comprehensive surveillance' and testing of suspect cases, the WHO said that a country needs 140 tests per day per million population.
In India, 22 States and Union Territories are reported to be already conducting 140 and more tests per day per million. The states and UTs are being regularly being advised to increase the testing capacity to match the WHO advised levels of testing. For now, the number of persons being tested for the disease in India has crossed 8,994 per million.
One of the factors strongly aiding the increasing numbers of COVID-19 tests in the country is the steadily growing number of laboratories. With 865 labs in the government sector and 358 private labs, the total number of testing labs is 1223, to date.
In addition to the RT PCR test, CBNAAT and TrueNat are also being used to augment the testing capabilities.
The expansion of laboratory capacity has seen exponential increase from one lab in Jan in the beginning of this year to 121 labs in March and to 1223 labs in July.
During the last 24 hours alone, 3,20,161 samples have been tested. The cumulative number of samples tested, as of now is 1,24,12,664. The testing per million for India is consistently rising. Today it has touched 8994.7. On 14th July 2020, more than 3.2 lakh tests were done on a single day.
