India’s total number of tests for Covid-19 detection has crossed the 5 crore-mark. While tests per million witnessed an increase from 6,396 on July 1 to more than 36,000 as on date. This was stated by the Union Health Ministry on Tuesday.
Recording over 90,000 new cases for two days in a row, India’s COVID-19 cases rose by 75,809 in the last 24 hours to reach 42,80,422 on Tuesday. A record 1,133 fatalities took the death toll to 72,775, the Union health ministry data showed.
During the same period, the number of recoveries surged to more than 33,23,000 pushing the recovery rate to 77.65 per cent, according to the data updated at 8 am on Tuesday.
“India has come a long way from conducting just one test from the lab at National Institute of Virology, Pune in January 2020 to more than five crore tests till today. 10,98,621 tests were conducted in the last 24 hours testifying the enlarged testing capacity in the country,” the ministry said in an official release. The average daily tests conducted (week wise) have been demonstrating a consistent increase. This has registered a 3.2 times expansion from third week of July (3,26,971) to first week of September (10,46,470).
In its Guidance Note on “Public Health Criteria to Adjust Public Health and Social Measures in the Context of COVID-19″, WHO has advised countries to conduct 140 tests per day per million population for comprehensive surveillance for suspect cases. The average week-on-week data for India shows a rising improvement on this front.
