India sets new landmark, exceeds 3 crore COVID-19 tests

India has set a new landmark of conducting 3 crore tests, a testament to the focussed, consistent and coordinated efforts of the Centre and the state and UT governments, the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare said on Monday. 

With 7,31,697 tests conducted in the last 24 hours, India is on its resolved drive to increase its testing capacity to 10 lakh tests daily. Building on this achievement, the Tests Per Million (TPM) have seen a sharp increase to 21,769, the ministry said. 

While the cumulative testing rose from 1.2 crore on July 14 2020 to 3 crore on August 16, 2020, the positivity rate has seen a rise from 7.5% to 8.81% in the same period. Although higher number of tests will push the positivity rate initially, but as the Delhi experience has amply shown, it will eventually lower when combined with other measures such as prompt isolation, tracking and timely clinical management, it further said. 

"Aggressive TESTING leads to early identification and isolation of COVID19 positive cases. This coupled with efficient clinical treatment brings the Fatality Rate down. Thus, enhanced and timely TESTING is not only keeping the Positivity Rate low but also the Fatality Rate low," the ministry said. 

A prominent determinant of the evolving testing strategy is the steadily widening diagnostic lab network in the country. This has significantly grown from one lab at Pune in early January 2020 to 1470 today, including 969 labs in the government sector and 501 private labs.