India tops 2mn Covid-19 tests

NEW DELHI: The number of Covid-19 tests carried out in India crossed 2 million on Thursday, doubling in 12 days.

“Our target was to cross 2 million tests by the end of May, but we have done it two weeks ahead of our goal. With 504 laboratories, including 359 Government laboratories and 145 private ones, doing Covid-19 tests, we have also crossed the daily capacity of 100,000 tests,” Union health minister Dr Harsh Vardhan said.

At this level, India has tested around 1,540 people per million of its population, much higher than the 94.5 per million population it was testing in late March but still far lower than the tests per million in other countries. In the US, Spain, Russia, the UK, and Italy, the corresponding numbers are 31,080; 52,781; 42,403; 32,691; and 45,246 respectively.

The doubling rate of infections has slowed to 13.9 days, from 11.1 days over the past 14 days, the minister said.

“The fatality rate is 3.2%, and the recovery rate has further improved to 33.6%, up from 32.83% on Wednesday. There are 3% of active cases in ICUs, of which 0.39% are on ventilators and 2.7% on oxygen support,” he added

Testing for Covid-19 has increased fivefold since April 1, when the cumulative number of people tested was 38,914, and daily testing is expected to cross 100,000 tests a day, from 5,580 a day on April 1.

Covid-19 is diagnosed using Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) assay, which is the only diagnostic test for Covid-19 approved by the WHO.

“India now has enough back-up resources to sustain and scale up testing comfortably at the present growth rate, if needed. We have reduced our dependence on imports substantially and with local manufacturing rising, there are no shortages. We have enough testing kits, RNA extraction kits, VTMs (viral transport medium) and other components to last us till July,” said CK Mishra, secretary, environment, and co-chair of the PM’s high-level committee on preparedness for a medical emergency.

RT-PCR is used for qualitative detection of genetic material called Ribonucleic Acid (RNA) from Sars-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19.