Government has set a target of conducting at least one lakh Covid tests in the next three days in a bid to find more asymptomatic patients who are yet to be tested, health officials said on Thursday.

The tests, officials said, will help the health machinery get a clearer picture of the situation and proceed with its work according. “The target is to test 1 lakh people. We will try our level best to achieve it,” said Health Minister Banna Gupta.

The Government has so far collected samples of around 2.9 lakh Covid suspects and tested nearly 2.8 lakh of them, figures with the National Health Mission (NHM) highlight. Chief minister Hemant Soren recently said that around 8000 Covid tests were conducted across Jharkhand every day, and attributed the spike in cases to the intensified testings.

However, conducting 1 lakh tests in three days, nearly four times the average in Jharkhand, would require extra efforts from health workers and the concerned district administrations, doctors involved in treating Covid patients said.

National Health Mission (NHM) Director Ravi Shankar Shukla said that the state is equipped with infrastructure to test 1 lakh people in the next three days.

“The aim is to test as many people as possible and find maximum possible cases. Different districts have been given targets as per their manpower and infrastructure.”

The testings, Shukla said, will be done through TrueNat, Reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and Rapid Antigen Test (RAT). “The more cases we find, the better it will be for us. If most of the patients are tested and isolated, then the spread of the virus can be checked,” he added.

The drive will be aggressively run on July 31, August 1 and August 2 across the 24 districts in Jharkhand, said Shukla, adding that Ranchi administration will try and conduct at least 4000 tests during this period, while East Singhbhum will aim at conducting around 3500 tests. Dhanbad has set a target of testing around 3000 people during the special drive.

Doctors leading Jharkhand's fight against Covid-19 have said that a majority of patients in the State were asymptomatic, and it was difficult to say if a person is infected only on the basis of symptoms.

Around 10,000 cases of Covid infection have surfaced in Jharkhand so far, and around 6000 of them are active, government data states. The number of Covid casualties in State crossed 100 mark on Thursday, while the recovery rate staggered around 40 per cent, officials said.