Story in Numbers: India's Covid rate is far lower than other countries

The World Health Organization director-general’s plea on March 16 to countries to ramp up testing must remain central to India’s Covid-19 strategy, experts said, as the country bought time with the lockdown. Indian states testing more patients are reporting higher Covid-19 cases. But for every 100 tests conducted, fewer tests in India are showing positive compared to other countries.

True, India remains among the countries with the lowest rates of testing per million patients. The country’s tests per million figure stands at 66, as opposed to 29,591 for Bahrain, and 11,448 for Italy. The US is conducting 5,027 tests per million people.

But of the tests that are being conducted, India’s Covid-19 positive rate is far lower. There seems to be no scientific or other explanation for this. Between April 10 and April 11, 1035 new Covid-19 cases were added, the highest single-day spike in India. By March 24, 22,694 samples from 21,804 individuals had been tested for COVID-19, according to the Indian Council of Medical Research. Close to 41.5% (9,409) of these tests were conducted between March 20-24 at an average of nearly 1,882 tests per day.