India crossed the 60 million mark for coronavirus disease (Covid-19) tests on Wednesday, as 11,36,613 tests were conducted in a single day.
It has taken the country almost eight months to conduct 6,05,65,728 Covid-19 tests.
The first Covid-19 swab sample in India was tested on January 23 at the National Institute of Virology (NIV) of the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) in Pune.
India had a NIV lab in January. Since then, the country has added 1,751 labs to its network to conduct Covid-19 tests, including 1,059 and 692 in the government and private sectors, respectively.
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“Labs are added daily after due approvals. It has been a major effort to help establish, reuse, and even upgrade various virology labs across the country to equip them to test for Covid-19. Not only ICMR, other government departments such as the Department of Biotechnology (DBT), the Department of Science and Technology (DST), the Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO), etc. have also been instrumental in expanding the infrastructure of tests, and that too in such a short time, “said an ICMR official, requesting anonymity.
On average, India has been running one million tests daily to diagnose Covid-19 for the past three weeks, including reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and rapid antigen detection (RAD) tests.
RAD tests account for up to 40% of total Covid-19 diagnostic tests by volume, according to ICMR data.
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There has been a progressive increase in Covid-19 testing in the country.
As of April 8, 10,000 cumulative tests for Covid-19 were conducted. The figure increased to one million on May 3; five million for June 10; 10 million for July 7; and crossed the 60 million mark on Wednesday.
The average daily Covid-19 tests carried out in the country has seen an increase of 0.5 million (5,04,266) between July 29 and August 4 to around 1.1 million (10, 94, 592 ) this week, according to the latest data from the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoH & FW).
However, the high Covid-19 positivity rate in some states, which are conducting large-scale testing, is an area of concern.
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Rajesh Bhushan, Secretary, MoH & FW, said that the national Covid-19 positivity rate is 8.4%.
But some states like Maharashtra with 21.5%, Andhra Pradesh (12.3%), Karnataka (12.1%), Tamil Nadu (9.2%) have a higher positivity rate than the national average due to their aggressive testing mechanism, he said.
“These states will have to further increase testing due to the higher positivity rate,” he added.
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