‘UP’S TALLY OF RT-PCR TESTS CROSSES 2 CRORE’
The tally of RT-PCR (reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction) tests, considered the gold standard of Covid-19 testing, crossed the two crore (20 million) mark in Uttar Pradesh on Thursday, the state government said on Friday. The state’s total of all Covid-19 sample tests stood at 4.61 crore (46.1 million) till Thursday, it added.
Additional chief secretary (information and micro, small and medium enterprises) Navneet Sehgal said the state government was organising aggressive sample testing to break the Covid-19 infection chain in the urban and rural areas of the state.
Within a year, Uttar Pradesh conducted two crore RT-PCR tests, he said, adding that the state had set a target of 1.50 lakh RT-PCR tests per day.
In March last year, Uttar Pradesh’s first Covid case was reported from Agra and the samples were sent to National Institute of Virology (NIV), Pune and National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), New Delhi since Uttar Pradesh, at the time, had no facility to test the Sars-Cov-2 pathogen that causes the Covid-19. Later, the state’s first Covid-19 laboratory became functional at King George’s Medical University (KGMU) and it tested just 72 samples on March 23 last year, he added.
By April-end this year, the state had a network of 125 government and 104 private laboratories. Twelve laboratories set up by the state health and family welfare department in the backward districts as well as 24 laboratories established by medical education department in the autonomous medical colleges, medical institutes and medical universities in May had given a boost to the RT-PCR tests, the senior official said. The state government was focusing on tests to check the spread of Covid-19 in the rural areas, he added.
Surveillance teams have surveyed 89,512 villages and positive cases have been detected in 28,742 villages. Antigen tests are being conducted in the rural areas. Those villagers who had Covid-like symptoms despite the antigen test report being negative underwent RT-PCR test, Sehgal said.
Principal secretary (medical education) Alok Kumar said the state government was constantly working to increase the number of RT-PCR tests to identify infected people and isolate them to break the infection chain.