NEW DELHI: India's national Covid-19 test positivity rate now stands at 6.73 per cent, the Centre on Monday said on Monday.
The rate of positivity is an important indicator in assessing the trend of an outbreak and according to the World Health Organization, this rate should be under 5 in order to contain the pandemic.
The Union Ministry of Health, meanwhile, said that as on Sunday there are eight states/UTs with lower test positivity rate than the national average and tests per million higher than the national average.
These include Puducherry (5.55%), Chandigarh (4.36%), Assam (2.84%), Tripura (2.72%), Karnataka (2.64%), Rajasthan (2.51%), Goa (2.5%), and Punjab (1.9%).
Meanwhile, the single-day jump of 24,248 Covid-19 cases on Monday took India’s tally close to the 7-lakh mark, while the death toll climbed to 19,693 with 425 fatalities recorded in 24 hours.
In a statement, the Centre underlined that it significantly bolstered the efforts being made by the Delhi government to ensure an increase in testing in the national capital.
Tests were ramped up through increased RT-PCR testing along with the new Rapid Antigen Point-of-Care tests which give results in only about 30 minutes without a lab.
“As a result of concerted and focused efforts by Government of India to augment efforts, the average number of samples being tested per day which was only 5481 between June 1 and 5 has witnessed a huge increase to reach an average of 18,766 samples per day between July 1-5,” said the ministry in a statement.
“In spite of significantly increased testing in Delhi, the positivity rate has seen a substantial decrease from about 30% to 10% in the last three weeks.”
The total number of Covid-19 tests in India, conducted to diagnose, has now reached near one crore-mark, as per the Indian Council of Medical Research. figures. “A cumulative total of 99,69,662 samples have been tested as of now 1,80,596 samples being tested on July 5,” ICMR said.
As of now, there are 1,105 testing labs in the country of which 788 are in the government sector while 317 are private labs. The Centre claims that for the last two weeks, nearly 2 lakhs tests were being conducted on an average every day.