As India reports a massive number of coronavirus cases each day, several states have increased testing, except Delhi which has witnessed a drop of 23 percent in testing in the week between April 16 and 23. On the contrary, Kerala has increased testing by over 92.72 percent for the same period, data says.
States including West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Assam, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and Karnataka have also increased testing in the last one week, data from respective states suggests.
On Friday, India reported over 3.46 lakh fresh coronavirus cases. Delhi is among the top five states which collectively are accountable for 52.82 percent of cases as they reported 1.83 lakh cases, the Union Health Ministry data suggests.
Maharashtra (66,836 cases); Uttar Pradesh (36,605); Kerala (28,447); Karnataka (26,962) and Delhi (24,311) are the biggest contributors in the daily cases.
Barring Delhi, all the states in top five have increased testing in the last one week.
Delhi conducted over 98,000 tests on April 16 (98,957 samples) and April 17 (99,230). This dropped to 85,620 samples on April 18. Delhi again tested over 90,000 samples on the next two days – April 19 (90,696) and April 20 (98,632). However, since April 21, there has been a drop in the testing with less than 76,000 samples tested on Thursday and Friday. The tests conducted on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday were 83,141, 72,208 and 75,037, respectively.
In November, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had announced that they will conduct over one lakh tests each day, when Delhi was facing the third wave of coronavirus, as per the government.
On April 8, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had asked states for proactive testing. He said the asymptomatic patients will be discovered with more testing and they can be home quarantined. Modi said with testing, the infected people will not live the life with their family as before and hence, families can be saved from getting infected.
In the last one week, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh have reported a marginal increase in testing.
Maharashtra, the worst affected state in terms of daily cases and deaths, conducted 2,72,226 tests on April 16. On Friday, the state conducted 2,77,607 tests, an increase of 1.97 percent.
Barring April 19 and April 20, when the state conducted less than 2.66 lakh tests, Maharashtra has conducted more than 2.72 lakh tests each day between April 16 and April 23.
Uttar Pradesh conducted 2,23,307 tests on April 16. On Friday, the state conducted 2,25,236 tests, an increase of 0.86 percent. Barring April 19, the samples tested in Uttar Pradesh were above 2.23 lakh. On April 19, the state tested 2 lakh samples.
Similarly, Karnataka reported 32.69 percent increase in testing between April 16 and April 23 when the state conducted 1,33,737 tests and 1,77,466 tests, respectively. Since Wednesday, the state has conducted over 1.52 lakh tests each day.
Kerala, also among the top five states, has increased testing massively – from 67,775 tests on April 16 to 1,30,617 tests on Friday, almost double. On Saturday, Kerala conducted 1.31 lakh tests.
Apart from the states in the top five, few other states, which went for polls in the first week of April, have increased testing.
West Bengal has increased testing by 31.11 percent between the last week – 40,153 samples on April 16 to 52,646 samples on April 23.
West Bengal, which conducted 41,569 tests on December 15 and 30,560 tests on January 15, had reduced testing since February starting, ahead of the polls. On February 1, the state conducted 18,168 tests. 13,370 samples were tested on March 15. However, since April 13, the state has been conducting over 40,000 tests each day.
Tamil Nadu conducted 97,210 samples on April 16. On Friday, the tests conducted were 1,25,593, a 29.19 percent increase.
Assam has witnessed a jump of 123.32 percent in testing in the last seven days as the daily testing increased from 32,421 samples on April 16 to 72,405 on April 23. On April 20 and April 21, the state tested over 60,000 samples. On Thursday and Friday, the samples tested were over 70,000.
The state had dropped testing drastically during the election time, from March end to April first week. On March 17, Assam conducted 13,204 tests. On March 28, and March 29, 5,332 tests were conducted. Only 7,075 tests were conducted on April 4. Since the last phase polling on April 6, Assam has increased testing. From 17,605 samples tested on April 6 to 1.02 lakh samples tested on April 12. However, it has again dropped on April 18 as 23,300 samples were tested. The testing in Assam has again increased since April 19 with 65,410 samples tested.
Saturday was the third day when India reported over 3-lakh cases in a day. Also, the fourth day when India reported over 2,000 deaths in a day.
India has been witnessing a constant rise in fresh Coronavirus cases for the last few weeks.
Earlier this month, India became the second country in the world, after the US, to cross the two-lakh mark in the daily cases being reported, days before it reported the global highest of three-lakh.
Registering a steady increase for the 45th day in a row, India’s total active caseload has reached 25.52 lakh on Saturday morning. It comprises 15.37 per cent of the country’s total positive cases.
Read all the Latest News, Breaking News and Coronavirus News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Telegram.
Comments
0 comment