Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, August 17: Setting a new landmark, India has completed conducting more than three crores of Corona tests demonstrating focused, consistent and coordinated efforts by both the central and the state governments and union territories to bring under control at the earliest the COVID-19 pandemic.
An official spokesman of the union government said on Monday that the expanded diagnostic lab network and facilitation for easy testing across the country had given a substantial boost to increase testing. By conducting 7,31,697 tests in the last 24 hours, India had shown its resolve to increase its testing capacity to 10 lakh tests daily. This had also showed a sharp increase in Tests Per Million (TPM) to 21,769.
As the cumulative testing rose from 1.2 crore on July 14 to three crores on Sunday, the positivity rate also showed a rise from 7.5% to 8.81% in the same period. Explaining the situation, the spokesman, however, pointed out that although higher number of tests would push the positivity rate initially, the Delhi experience had amply demonstrated that it would eventually come down when the enhanced testing would help in prompt isolation, tracking and timely clinical management.
The spokesman pointed out that aggressive testing would lead to early identification and isolation of the Corona positive cases and this coupled with efficient clinical treatment would bring the fatality rate down. “Thus, enhanced and timely testing is not only keeping the Positivity Rate low but also the Fatality Rate low,” he added.
As emphasized by the prime minister Narendra Modi during his Independence day address to the nation on Saturday, a prominent determinant of the evolving testing strategy was the steadily widening diagnostic lab network in the country, the spokesman said. The lab network had significantly grown from one lab at Pune in early January, this year to 1470 at present, including 969 labs in the government sector and 501 private labs. These include:
- Real-Time RT PCR based testing labs: 754 (Govt: 450 + Private: 304)
- TrueNat based testing labs: 599 (Govt: 485 + Private: 114)
- CBNAAT based testing labs: 117 (Govt: 34 + Private: 83).
The spokesman pointed out that along with the increasing testing, India was also firmly marching ahead on the road to enhanced recoveries every day. The country registered the highest single day recoveries with as many as 57,584 COVID-19 patients getting cured and discharged in the last 24 hours further spurring the Recovery Rate to cross 72 per cent. “This is the result of successful and coordinated implementation of an effective containment strategy, aggressive and comprehensive testing coupled with standardized clinical management of the critical patients. India has followed a Standard of Care protocol for the differentiated categorisation of COVID-19 patients- mild, moderate and severe as clearly formulated in the Clinical Management Protocol of Ministry of Health & Family Welfare (MoHFW). The effective clinical management strategies have shown to yield positive results,” the spokesman claimed.
With more patients recovering and being discharged from hospitals and home isolation (in case of mild and moderate cases), India’s COVID-19 recoveries have reached nearly two million (19,19,842). “This has ensured that the difference between the recovered and active cases continues to expand which was 12,42,942 on Monday,” he said.
According to the spokesman, the actual case load of the country, viz. the Active Cases (6,76,900 on date) had reduced and currently stood at 25.57% of the total positive cases. “Early identification of cases had helped to ensure timely and prompt isolation of the mild and moderate cases and hospitalisation of the severe and critical cases thereby leading to timely and effective management of cases. The Case Fatality Rate has further slumped today touching 1.92%,” the spokesman said.
