Throughput Covid-19 facilities will ramp up testing capacity in the country and help in strengthening early detection and treatment of the deadly disease

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will launch high throughput COVID-19 testing facilities on July 27 via video conferencing. These facilities will ramp up testing capacity in the country and help in strengthening early detection and treatment, thus assisting in controlling the spread of the pandemic.

These three high-throughput testing facilities have been set up strategically at ICMR-National Institute of Cancer Prevention and Research, Noida; ICMR-National Institute for Research in Reproductive Health, Mumbai; and ICMR-National Institute of Cholera and Enteric Diseases, Kolkata, and will be able to test over 10,000 samples in a day.

These labs will also reduce turn-around-time and exposure of lab personnel to infectious clinical materials. The labs are enabled to test diseases other than COVID as well, and post the pandemic, will be able to test for Hepatitis B and C, HIV, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, Cytomegalovirus, Chlamydia, Neisseria and Dengue

Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare and Science and Technology Dr Harsh Vardhan along with Chief Ministers of Maharashtra, West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh will be participating in the event.

In the meanwhile, India recorded the highest ever recoveries in a single day.

A total 36,145 COVID-19 patients were cured and discharged in the last 24 hours. This has taken the total number of recovered cases to 8,85,576. The recovery rate has achieved another high of fast approaching 64 percent. It stands at 63.92 percent today.

This means more patients are recovering thus maintaining the steadily widening difference between recovered and active COVID-19 patients. This gap has crossed 4 lakh and currently stands at 4,17,694. Recovered cases are 1.89 times the active cases (4,67,882).

The Union government has advised all State/UT governments to keep up with and effectively implement the strategy of “Test, Track and Treat”. For the first time a record number of more than 4,40,000 tests have been conducted in a single day. With 4,42,263 samples tested in the last 24 hours, the number of Test Per Million (TPM) has further increased to 11,805 and cumulative testing to 1,62,91,331. For the first time, government labs have set a new record of testing 3,62,153 samples. The private labs have also scaled a new high of 79,878 samples tested in a single day.

The aggressive testing along with ramped up hospital infrastructure by combining public and private sector efforts has enabled early identification and prompt triaging of COVID-19 patients leading to lower fatalities. As a result, the Case Fatality Rate is progressively falling and currently, it is 2.31 percent. India has one of the lowest fatality rates in the world.