The UP government under the leadership of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath set a milestone by conducting 1 lakh Covid-19 tests in 24 hours on Monday (July 27), the Times of India reported.
According to reports, 1.06 lakh was the maximum number of tests done by any state in a single day.
Alok Kumar, who is the Secretary to CM overseeing Covid-19 testing work in the state, attributed the achievement to rapid antigen test kits which confirm the presence of coronavirus in high viral load persons within half an hour.
“About 52% of the tests were done with the help of ICMR recommended antigen kits while 45% tests were done through the RT PCR method – the gold standard in COVID-19 testing. The remaining was done with the help of TruNat machines,” he said, adding, “UP is the only state in India to be having such an aggressive testing strategy.”
Additional Chief Secretary of Health and Family Welfare Department, Amit Mohan Prasad said,“UP’s COVID case positivity rate has remained between 3-4% despite the surge in case only because we stayed ahead through aggressive testing,”.
The number of tests conducted by the state of Uttar Pradesh since February was 19.4 lakh of which over 11.3 lakh were done in July alone. Across UP, 32 government labs and 14 private labs did all the tests and over 95% of the tests were done in government labs while nearly 83% of the tests were conducted using the RT-PCR method.
UP ranks number three in terms of the total tests conducted after Tamil Nadu and is competing with Maharashtra to grab the second place.