Coronavirus response: India’s COVID-19 testing capacity increases to more than 5.15 lakh tests a day

Last updated on February 14th, 2023 at 12:56 pm

With a rapid surge in the number of infected cases, India has ramped up its testing capacity to combat the pandemic crisis in the country. Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) officials, on Monday, stated that India recorded the highest number of single-day testing with more than 5.15 lakhs tests conducted in the past 24 hours (July 26). Since the pandemic outbreak has begun in the country, more than 1.68 crore tests have been reportedly conducted by the Indian health authorities.

India has become the third-worst pandemic-hit country in the world after the United States and Brazil. On Sunday, the tally of Coronavirus cases in the country crossed 14-lakh mark after the biggest spike of nearly 50,000 infected cases was reported in 24 hours.

In a bid to tackle the spread of the COVID-19 virus, the Central government has advised the governments of all states and union territories to stay updated with the strategy of “Test, Track and Treat”, along with aggressive testing of people. It might lead to an increase in daily positive cases, but the number of infected cases will eventually decline after targeted efforts in combating the disease, according to Health Ministry officials. The ministry has also stated that India has one of the lowest case-fatality rates in the world as a significant drop of almost 2.31% has been recorded in recent days. Moreover, India’s recovery rate has also gone up to almost 64% after a record number of more than 36,100 patients recovered from the disease in 24 hours on Sunday.

However, at a time when Delhi and Mumbai are working on flattening their COVID-19 curves as the number of infections has recently declined in both cities, other states such as Karnataka, West Bengal, Bihar, and Andhra Pradesh are facing immediate risk of becoming new hotspots for the disease in the country. As per media reports, Delhi’s Coronavirus recovery rate crossed 87% on Monday as the number of active cases has gone down to the lowest (12,657) in the past seven weeks. Now, there are less than 10% active cases in the National Capital.

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Meanwhile, state governments have also reinforced their hospital infrastructure with collaborative efforts of public and private sectors. While in March, there were hardly 120 labs carrying out COVID-19 tests, India has intensified its capacity to test virus samples in a total of 1310 labs in July. Out of these, 906 COVID-19 testing labs are government-run while the remaining 404 are private-sector labs.