Uttar Pradesh on Tuesday achieved yet another benchmark by testing as many as five crore samples for novel coronavirus infection suspects at an average 3 lakh tests per day. UP has become the first state in the country to cross this milestone.
Intensifying preventive measures to control the spread of COVID-19 as per the target of ‘Trace, Test and Treat’, the Yogi Adityanath-led state government conducted a total of 3,31,511 tests in the last 24 hours, out of which nearly 1,500 samples tested positive.
“Uttar Pradesh has come a long way from getting the first Covid test conducted from the lab at National Institute of Virology in Pune in 2020 to conducting over five crore tests on Wednesday. More than three lakh tests were conducted in the last 24 hours and it testifies the enlarged testing capacity in the state,” a government spokesman said.
He said with efficient functioning of government and private laboratories, the state had ramped up its Covid testing capacity from one lakh RT-PCR tests per day to 1.5 lakh or more RT-PCR tests per day in just 40 days. “Testing is the backbone for containing the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 as it helps early detection of cases and 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 chances of individuals with undetected virus exposure from roaming freely among unexposed individuals,” the official said. The state government also initiated world’s largest house-to-house surveillance for detection of COVID-19 infection in rural areas to contain transmission of the disease by testing people with symptoms for 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. “The 70 per cent of tests since the second wave surge of COVID-19 cases in the state have solely been conducted in the rural regions. More than 61 lakh tests were conducted in the month of April, out of which about 63 per cent were in rural areas while in the month of May, out of over 85 lakh tests, the rural areas accounted for about 70 per cent of tests,” he said. The official said that the state’s rural control strategies, as well as community-based and individual case-based control measures, had so far been overall effective in identifying and treating COVID-19 patients.