Image Source: New Indian Express

Agencies:

NEW DELHI: India is continuously stepping up it's COVID-19 testing capacity. In the last 24 hours, more than 8,20,000 samples were tested taking the cumulative testing numbers till date to over 3 crore 76,51,000. The positivity rate continues to record decline despite increased testing and stands at a weekly average of around 8 % of the total samples tested. Tests done per million of the population in the country has also scaled new peak of being over 26,000.

The Union Health Ministry informed that the remarkable feat has been achieved by rigorously following the "Test, Track and Treat" strategy. ICMR said that the indigenous production of testing kits in the country has brought down the cost incurred on single RT-PCR test from around 2,000 rupees to nearly 300 rupees. The week wise average daily tests conducted has also witnessed a sharp increase from around 2.3 lakhs in the 1st week of July 2020 to over 8 lakhs in the current week.

Government said that the strong determinant of this milestone has been a sustained expansion of testing labs across the country.