In a significant ramping of the testing facilities across the country, more than 2 lakh samples/day were tested in the last 24 hours, the highest so far.
With 2,15,195 samples tested yesterday, the total number of samples tested thus far is 73,52,911. While 1,71,587 samples were tested in Government labs, 43,608 were tested by private labs. Private labs have also reached the highest per day sampling with this quantity, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare said today in a press release.
As a testimony to the ever growing network of diagnostic labs for testing COVID-19, India now has 1000 labs across the country. This includes 730 in the government sector and 270 private labs.
The break-up is as below:
Real-Time RT PCR based testing labs: 557 (Govt: 359 + Private: 198)
TrueNat based testing labs: 363 (Govt: 343 + Private: 20)
CBNAAT based testing labs: 80 (Govt: 28 + Private: 52)
The number of COVID-19 patients recovering very day is growing too. During the last 24 hours, a total of 10,495 COVID-19 patients have been cured. A total of 2,58,684 patients have been cured. The recovery rate is 56.71% amongst COVID-19 patients.
Presently, there are 1,83,022 active cases and all are under active medical supervision.
Meanwhile, the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) has also recommended the use of rapid antigen test kits for diagnosis of COVID-19 in containment zones in combination with the RT-PCR test. The kits will allow faster diagnosis without laboratory examination. India is also producing high quality, low cost testing swabs which resulted in the production of millions of swabs in record time and at a fraction of the cost of the imported ones. However, in spite of these developments, access to testing still remains a huge challenge in a large country like India.
ICMR has suggested to include additional testing methods to improve the access and availability of testing in various parts of the country.
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