India's Covid-19 testing hits record high of 420,000 samples a day

India has gradually ramped-up its testing capacity for Covid-19 and conducted over 420,000 tests in a day, the highest ever, the Union Health Ministry said Saturday, crediting the increase in number of labs for the achievement.

India had only one lab for testing samples for the disease in January but it has now increased the number to 1,301, including private labs. The Health Ministry said revised guidelines by ICMR and all-round efforts by states also aided in widespread testing.

Till Friday, a total of 1,58,49,068 tests for Covid-19 had been done in the country.

India did 350,000 tests every day over the last one week, the ministry said.

With 4,20,898 samples tested in the past 24 hours, it added, the Tests Per Million (TPM) has increased to 11,485 and continue to maintain an upward trend.

"The Union government has advised all state and UT governments to keep up the strategy of 'Test, Track and Treat' with aggressive testing which may lead to higher number of daily positive cases initially but would eventually achieve a decline as has been demonstrated after the central government's targeted efforts in the NCT of Delhi," the ministry said in a statement.

With increased testing of samples for Covid-19, the fatality rate has significantly dropped to 2.35 per cent on Saturday and the recovery rate has surged to 63.54 per cent.

"India has one of the lowest fatality rates in the world," the health ministry said.

The downward trend in fatality rate means the collective efforts of the Centre and state and UT governments have checked the mortality due to Covid-19, it stated.

A total of 8,49,431 Covid-19 patients have recovered.

The recoveries exceed the active cases by 3,93,360.

However, with 48,916 fresh cases, India's Covid-19 tally zoomed past 1.3 million on Saturday, just two days after it crossed the 1.2-million mark, while the death toll mounted to 31,358, the ministry said.