The Yogi Adityanath-led Uttar Pradesh government on Thursday directed health officials to increase the testing rate of COVID-19 up to 2 lakh per day in the state. So far, the state has tested over 50 lakh samples since the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
The Chief Minister also expressed satisfaction over the current testing rate in the state and asked officials to touch the mark of 2 lakh samples per day, urging Additional Chief Secretary (Home) Awanish Kumar Awasthi to emphasise on contact-tracing and surveillance to contain the spread of coronavirus infection in the state.
On Wednesday, Uttar Pradesh health team tested 1, 38, 378 samples for testing in 24 hours, taking the total tally of testing to 5, 08, 025 in the state.
Out of over 50 lakh samples, 2, 40, 926 samples were tested in government laboratories through RT-PCR and CB-NAAT method, 1, 50, 883 in private laboratories, 23, 53, 460 samples have been tested through Antigen testing, 42, 950 through TRUENAT method at medical colleges, 83, 367 at district hospitals and 40, 119 samples at private laboratories.
Chairing a meeting at his official residence in Lucknow on Thursday, Yogi Adityanath directed officials to ramp up the efforts in Lucknow, Kanpur City, Shahjahanpur and Gorakhpur, places that are badly hit by the virus. He further ordered for at least 48 hours backup supply of oxygen in COVID-19 hospitals.
“The total number of testing till May 22 in UP was just 2 lakh, which later went up to 5 lakh on June 16 and reached up to 10 lakh on July 6. The sample testing in the state reached 15 lakh on July 18 and 20 lakh on July 28. On August 9, the testing rate moved up to 30 lakh and reached 40 lakh on August 19,” Additional Chief Secretary (Health) Amit Mohan Prasad said at a presser in Lucknow.
Prasad said that there were zero laboratories for COVID-19 testing in the state in February and samples were being sent to NIV, Pune and NCDC, Delhi. “Later, COVID testing started at KGMU Lucknow, Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College, Aligarh Muslim University, which was followed by Meerut, Agra, Gorakhpur and Prayagraj in March. At the moment there were 35 government labs and 22 private labs. Besides this, the government has also installed TRUENAT machines at government hospitals across 75 districts,” he said, adding that 17 new labs were likely to start working from Friday.
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