Number of Covid-19 testing labs increased to 924 in India

The Union Health Ministry has said that it has increased the number of COVID-19 testing labs to 924 in the country. Of the total labs, the number of government labs has been increased to 674 and private labs to 250 that are capable of Real-Time (RT) PCR, TrueNat and CBNAAT based testing.

The RT-PCR based testing labs are 535 that include 347 government and 188 private labs. The number of TrueNat based testing labs is 316, including 302 government and 14 private labs. However, the number of CBNAAT based testing labs is 73, comprising 25 government and 48 private labs.

The report of a high level Expert Committee headed by Dr VK Paul on rates to be charged by testing laboratories has been received in the Health Ministry and has been sent to Delhi Government for further necessary action. The Committee has fixed the rate per test at 2,400



rupees.

The Health Ministry said a total of 1,63,187 COVID-19 samples were tested in the last 24 hours, and the total number of samples tested so far is 60 lakh 84 thousand 256.

In the last 24 hours, the Ministry said a total of 6,922 COVID-19 patients were cured. With this, the number of cured patients rose to 1,86,934, indicating that the recovery rate rose to 52.80 per cent.

For the ninth consecutive day, the number of recoveries remained higher than the active ones. Currently, 1,55,227 active cases are under medical supervision.

According to the Ministry, 10,974 fresh cases were reported in the last 24 hours taking the total to 3,54,065.

A total of 11,903 people have succumbed to the deadly disease since the first case was reported on January 30.