Testing an average three lakh samples daily, Uttar Pradesh became the first State in the country on Thursday in setting yet another benchmark of testing over seven crore samples for novel coronavirus infection.
“Uttar Pradesh has been testing more than three lakh samples for Covid-19 infection per day regularly, which is over ten times more than the prescribed testing protocol for the state by global health body World Health Organisation. Testing protocol set by the WHO for Uttar Pradesh is 32,000 tests per day. However, Covid testing in the state has hovered between 2.5 lakh to 3 lakh daily in recent weeks,” Additional Chief Secretary (Information) Navneet Sehgal said in Lucknow on Thursday.
“From getting the first Covid sample test conducted from the laboratory of National Institute of Virology, Pune in 2020 to breaching the 7-crore test mark, Uttar Pradesh has come a long way.
Despite being the most populous State in the country, UP has outperformed all other States, including Delhi, Maharashtra and Rajasthan, by conducting a total of 1.50 lakh RT-PCR tests on an average per day. Testing is the backbone for containing the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 as it helps timely detection of positive cases and helps in their isolation and contact tracing.
A widely deployed and efficient testing strategy in Uttar Pradesh has helped in limiting the spread of new cases as it significantly reduced the chance of individuals with undetected virus exposure from roaming freely among unexposed individuals,” the senior official said.Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has been emphasising on the importance of aggressive testing according to which the state has been following the ‘Trace, Test and Treat’ mantra and is reaching the last mile to break the coronavirus chain. The state government even further initiated world’s largest house-to-house surveillance of Covid-19 in rural areas to contain transmission by testing people with symptoms, their rapid isolation, disease management and contact tracing.
More than 73,000 surveillance committees constituted by the Yogi government are moving across 97,941 villages in all 75 districts for this activity, which began on May 5, and has been extended to cover 100 per cent rural households. Almost 70 per cent of tests since the second wave of Covid-19 have solely been conducted in rural regions of the state.
Aiming to spread awareness about the importance of early detection and early treatment, surveillance committees have been visiting homes in rural areas to educate the people and have been repeatedly appealing to them to not hide symptoms and rather get themselves tested.
The State’s rural-control strategies, as well as community-based and individual case-based control measures, so far have been overall effective in identifying and treating patients.