India needs to “significantly ramp up” the number of tests done across the country to trace COVID-19 infection if the virus is to be contained in time, experts said. The death toll due to coronavirus rose to 414 and the number of cases to 12,380 in the country on Thursday, according to the Union Health Ministry. While the number of active COVID-19 cases is 10,477, as many as 1,488 people have been cured and discharged and one had migrated, it said. Data obtained from the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) said, till April 14, the number of samples tested stood at 2,44,893, an increase of 27,339 from the corresponding figure till the previous day (2,17,554). Experts feel the figures are modest for a count of the size of 1.3 billion and “much more number of tests” are needed to combat COVID-19 outbreak in the country. According to worldometers.info which maintains a global database on coronavirus cases and tests conducted, the US, where over 26,000 COVID-19 deaths have occurred, has done 31,00,387 tests averaging about 9,367 per million of population.The figures for India is 2,44,893 tests averaging 177 per million of population.Spain and Italy, two countries which have also seen several thousands of fatalities, have done 6,00,000 and 10,73,689 tests respectively.Dr Ravi Shekhar Jha, Senior Consultant and Head of the Department of Pulmonology at Fortis Escorts, Faridabad, said India is going in the right direction but it is not enough.“Given the massive size of our population, the number of tests needs to be ramped up and should be conducted more rigorously. We need to do effective contact tracing and test them so that those people in turn do not infect others,The number of samples tested till March 28 stood at 27,688, a rise of 7,038 from the corresponding figure till March 27, according to ICMR data.“The rise in number of cases happening is also because in the last few weeks during the lockdown, people who came in contact with affected people were traced and tested. This has to be increased manifold if we have to contain coronavirus in time, otherwise it will be a difficult affair,” Jha said.Dr Sandeep Budhiraja, Group Medical Director at Max Healthcare, said it has been decided to conduct coronavirus tests on “all our workforce and patients across the country”.
