National: India crosses the crucial milestone in its fight against COVID-19 on August 22. The Government of India fulfills its promise of exponentially increasing daily COVID-19 tests to 10 Lakhs.
India conducts 1 million tests in the past 24 hours. This is, however, a testament to the determined, focused, consistent and coordinated efforts of the Centre and the state and UT governments. With 10,23,836 tests done in the past 24 hours, India achieves its crucial resolve to test 10 Lakh samples daily.
With this achievement, the cumulative tests are more than 3.4 Crore. The actual number of total tests done is 3,44,91,073.
Also, the number of daily tests is increasing on a steep climb. Average daily tests during the past three weeks also strongly depict the progress made in the enhancement of COVID-19 tests across the country.
Many states and Union Territories have pushed ahead with aggressive testing. There is an equivalent decline in the positivity rate. Although a higher number of tests will initially lead to a rise in the positivity rate. However, it will eventually lower when combined with other measures. This includes prompt isolation, efficient tracking, and time effective and clinical management.
Combined with enhanced testing and also policy decisions of the Centre and the States and UTs have facilitated easy testing across the country. This gave a boost to the daily testing capacity.
Enhanced diagnostic lab network is also a factor in this achievement. On August 22, the country has a strong network of 1511 labs. It comprises of 983 labs in the government sector and 528 private labs. These include:
• Real-Time RT PCR based testing labs: 778. Government: 458 and Private: 320.
• TrueNat based testing labs: 615. Government: 491 and Private: 124.
• CBNAAT based testing labs: 118. Government: 34 and Private: 84.
