New Delhi: The Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) on Tuesday said that India's Covid-19 testing capacity has reached 3 lakh per day.
"The testing capacity for detecting the novel coronavirus in infected person in the country is continuously being ramped up. The country now have the capacity to test 3 lakh samples per day... However, the total capacity is yet to be utilised," said a senior official in the Health Ministry. The total number of samples tested so far is 5921069 with 154935 samples tested in the last 24 hours.
The ministry said that several states like Tamil Nadu, Odisha, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Telangana, Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh have already negotiated and reached an agreement with the private sector on reasonable rates and arrangements to provide critical care for Covid-19 patients.
"States have been asked to proactively engage with the private sector health providers and consider pooling in public and private health care facilities to help in providing prompt, good quality, and reasonable health care to Covid-19 patients," the ministry said.
India has also increased its network of Covid-19 testing laboratories to 907. Referring to Delhi, the ministry said that each of the 11 districts shall now have assigned labs for exclusively testing the samples from the respective districts. Currently, there are 42 labs in Delhi with per day testing capacity of 17000.
Also read:Patient's attendants remove ventilator plug for air cooler, man dies
On Monday, the Health Ministry in a guideline has suggested use of rapid antigen tests in containment zones and hospital settings under strict medical supervision. The domestic manufacturing capacity of antigen test kits in the country currently is around 10 million in a month.
Similarly, in order to facilitate states to easily procure the rapid antigen test kits, the government is ensuring that the domestic manufacturers are on board to the Government E-Marketplace (GEM) portal. The Health Ministry further said that ELISA and CLIA antibody test can be for asymptomatic frontline workers, doctors, paramedics, and for those working in Covid19 care.
Meanwhile, as per health ministry statistics, total number of Covid cases in India on Tuesday is 343091 with 153178 active cases and 180012 patients got cured. With 380 deaths in last 24 hours, India recorded 9900 deaths due to Covid 19 till date.
