By Our Correspondent
NEW DELHI/BHUBANESWAR: Continuing the spree of conducting more than 10 lakh tests per day from the last two days, India has witnessed an unprecedented surge in daily testing Thursday.Over 11.7 lakh (11,72,179) tests were done in the last 24 hours. With this achievement, the cumulative tests are more than 4.5 crore (4,55,09,380).This demonstrates an exponential increase in the daily COVID-19 testing in the country. From conducting merely 10 tests per day on 30th January, the daily average has crossed more than 11 lakhs on Thursday.
India’s daily testing numbers are one of the highest in the world. Such high levels of testing on a sustained basis over a period of time in widespread areas enables early diagnosis, and in turn facilitates seamless isolation and effective hospitalisation. This eventually leads to lower mortality rate. Higher numbers of testing also subsequently result in lowered positivity rate.
This surge in testing has been made possible by an equally speedy expansion in the testing lab network across the country. India has today 1623 labs in the country; 1022 labs in the government sector and 601 private labs. These include:• Real-Time RT PCR based testing labs: 823 (Govt: 465 + Private: 358)• TrueNat based testing labs: 678 (Govt: 523 + Private: 155)• CBNAAT based testing labs: 122 (Govt: 34 + Private: 88)
Also, state-of-the-art high throughput machines including Cobas 6800/8800 are installed at 5 sites: ICMR-Rajendra Memorial Research Institute of Medical Sciences, Patna; ICMR-National Institute for Cholera & Enteric Diseases, Kolkata; National Centre for Disease Control, Delhi; ICMR-National Institute for Research in Reproductive Health, Mumbai; and ICMR-National Institute for Cancer Prevention & Research, Noida. These can test around 1000 samples per day with minimum human intervention.
The testing capacity was augmented gradually with RT-PCR is the gold standard test in the phase-1 covering Large cities / Urban areas, followed by Molecular assays with short turn-around-time at the district level in the second phase. In phase-3, Antigen tests are recommended in containment zones and hospital tests where no molecular tests are available.
