New Delhi: India has significantly ramped up COVID-19 testing facilities in the 115 days since the first test on January 24 at Pune’s National Institute of Virology, scaling up from a “one lab, one test” scenario at the start of the outbreak to 555 labs across 34 states/UTs conducting one lakh tests per day in May.
There has been a steady increase in testing capacity over that period, starting with only four labs carrying out tests in the first week of February to 1,000 tests per day in March and one lakh tests daily tests this month.
Overall, according to the ICMR (Indian Council for Medical Research, the nodal body in this health crisis), India has conducted over 25 lakh COVID-19 tests so far.
In the past 60 days alone, India’s testing capacity has increased by 100 times.
The spurt in testing comes even as the number of coronavirus cases continues to rise; over 16,000 new cases have been reported in the last three days, with the daily case-count crossing 6,000 for the first time on Thursday, according to Health Ministry data released this morning.
There are 1.18 lakh COVID-19 cases in the country, with 3,583 deaths linked to the virus.
The data showing increase in testing is a step in the right direction but also shows that India remains well behind other countries in testing their respective populations.
In terms of tests per million of its population, India, (around 2,000 per million), ranks behind Spain (around 65,000), the United States and Germany (both around 38,000) and France (around 21,000).
In March the World Health Organisation (WHO) called on all countries to increase testing programs as the best way to slow the advance of the coronavirus pandemic. “We have a simple message to all countries – test, test, test,” WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
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