The country has reached new milestone in terms of COVID testing. With nearly eight crore 11 lakh overall tests so far, India continues to be the leader among other countries in terms of daily COVID testing figures. Nearly 11 lakh COVID samples were tested in the country in the last 24 hours. The Union Government and Indian Council of Medical Research have scaled up the testing infrastructure in a calibrated manner. India’s testing capacity has touched 15 lakh per day ensuring easily accessible COVID-19 tests by all. Health Ministry said that very high levels of testing lead to early identification, prompt isolation and effective treatment of COVID-19 cases. It said, this also leads to low Fatality Rate. Starting from just one testing lab at National Institute of Virology, Pune in January this year, the country today has one thousand 883 labs for testing COVID samples which includes one thousand 103 government and 780 private labs. Tests done per million of the population has also risen manifold in a span of two months and currently stands at nearly 50 thousand per million of the population. With the expansion of testing infrastructure, the daily testing by States and Union Territories has also increased. 23 States and UTs have recorded higher tests per million than the national average. Despite increase in testing, the positivity rate remains low and hovers around 8.2 per cent. Bihar, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Manipur, Jharkhand and Telangana are among the states recording a positivity rate even lower than five percent.
