India has fewer rates of coronavirus cases or is it due to the limited number of tests it’s conducting?

Last updated on February 9th, 2023 at 12:48 pm

India has the second-largest population on the planet, which is around 1.2 billion people, is locked down by the government for 21 days to battle the Covid-19 pandemic. The extreme measure has been taken to contain the spread of the virus.

India has reported 902 positive cases and 20 deaths from the novel coronavirus. Experts have argued that India’s low number of covid-19 cases could be a result of the limited number of testing, and the real figures of infected people might be higher.

As indicated by News 18, Italy, which has reported 74,386 Covid-19 cases, has done 3, 24,445 tests as on March 25, a rate of 5,268 tests per million of the population. Whereas India did 25,144 tests on 24,254 people as of 8 pm on March 25, and 581 positive cases had been affirmed on that day, according to ICMR reports.

Italy, the UK, the United States, South Korea, China, Spain, which has shown a significant rise in the number of Covid-19 cases, have conducted a high number of tests compared to India.

For example, the UK has conducted 97,019 tests so far at a rate of 1,469 tests for every million individuals, according to the Department of Health and Social Care. The UK has recorded 9,529 positive cases.

While the World Health Organization praised India’s measures to control the spread of the infection, its Director-General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, stated a lockdown alone might not help minimize the pandemic.

Read: Mega bank merger to come in effect from April 1, banking confederation urges to defer the plan

As per AP reporting, India has a capacity to test around 8,000 samples per day, but it is testing only 90 per day.

Public health authorities have justified the limited number of testing by stating that people with travel and contact history are being tested, and there is no confirmation yet of “community transmission” in India. Community transmission happens when people catch a disease from a source that is not traceable, DW News reported.

Article: DW/Scroll.in/TV 18 News