Coronavirus: With over 10 lakh tests a day, India crosses milestone of 13 crore COVID-19 tests

As many as 10,66,022 samples were tested for COVID-19 in the last 24 hours increasing India's total cumulative tests to 13,06,57,808, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) said on Saturday.

Keeping in line with its commitment to conduct more than one million tests every day, India successfully conducted one crore tests for the infection in a span of 10 days. The Health Ministry said an average of more than 10 lakh tests were conducted daily which ensured the cumulative positivity rate remained low.

"The cumulative national positivity rate stood at 6.93 per cent on Saturday, below the 7 per cent mark. The daily positivity rate yesterday was 4.34 per cent. Higher volumes of testing eventually lead to low positivity rate," MoHFW said.

While 24 States/UTs have conducted more tests per million population than India as a whole, 12 States/UTs have lower tests per million than the national average and have been advised to substantially ramp up the levels of testing.

"The daily positivity rate of 4.34 per cent pointed out that a comparatively huge volume was tested to detect these cases from the population. With a continuous surge in daily cases in European and American countries, India is taking all cautionary steps to bring the trajectory of the disease under control. In view of the increase in COVID-19 cases of some of the north Indian States, the Centre has advised all states and UTs to ramp up testing," it added.

In the last 24 hours, 46,232 people were found to be infected with the pathogen. Delhi reported 6,608 cases in the last 24 hours. Kerala recorded 6,028 new cases while Maharashtra reported 5,640 daily cases yesterday.

The country registered 49,715 new recoveries in the last 24 hours taking the total recovered cases to 84,78,124. Delhi saw 8,775 persons recovering from COVID-19. Maharashtra and Kerala reported 6,945 and 6,398 new recoveries, respectively and the recovery rate improved to 93.67 per cent today.

The gap between recovered cases and active cases has steadily increased and presently stands at 80,38,377.

The 82.62 per cent of the 564 case fatalities that have been reported in the past 24 hours are from ten States/UTs.

Maharashtra accounted for 27.48 per cent of new fatalities with 155 deaths reported yesterday. Delhi also saw a three-figure fatality count of 118 contributing another 20.92 per cent of the fatalities.

(ANI)

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