New Delhi (NVI): The World Health Organization (WHO) has advised that a country needs to conduct 140 tests per day per million population, explaining the concept of comprehensive surveillance and testing of suspect cases, Union Health Ministry said.
The Health Ministry in a statement said, “WHO in its guidance note on ‘Public Health Criteria to Adjust Public Health and Social Measures in the Context of Covid-19’ has advised comprehensive surveillance for suspected cases.”
As many as 22 states and union territories in India are reported to be already conducting 140 and more tests per day per million. In addition to this, the remaining states and UTs are being regularly advised to increase the testing capacity to match the WHO advised levels of testing, the statement added.
One of the factors strongly aiding the increasing numbers of COVID-19 tests in the country is the steadily growing network of labs for testing of COVID-19. With 865 labs in the government sector and 358 private labs, the total number of testing labs in the country stands at 1,223, as on date.
In addition to the gold standard for test, RT PCR, TrueNat and CBNAAT are also used to augment this facility, it said.
Out of these, 391 government labs and 242 private labs can conduct Real-Time RT PCR based testing.
Similarly, TrueNat based testing can be done by 439 government and 52 private labs and CBNAAT based testing can be conducted in 35 government and 64 private labs, ministry added.
The ministry also informed that the expansion of laboratory capacity has seen an exponential increase from one lab in January 2020 to 121 labs in March 2020 and 1,223 labs as of today.
During the last 24 hours, 3,20,161 samples were tested. The total number of samples tested so far in the country stands at 1,24,12,664, the ministry statement said.
However, the testing per million for India is consistently rising. As of today, it has touched 8994.7. On July 14, more than 3.2 lakh tests were done on a single day.
-RJV
