Uttar Pradesh conducting less than 100 tests / million population; lagging behind Assam, Meghalaya, Manipur

According to the state-wise testing data released by The Hindu, the state of Uttar Pradesh currently stands at the 6th position from the bottom in terms of testing for Coronavirus.

The state has tested only 90.7 people per million population, less than the likes of some north-eastern states such as Meghalaya (92.2), Manipur (99.4) and Assam (109.4).

National Capital Delhi tops the list with 930 tests / million and is running way ahead of other top ranking states such as Kerala (476.1), Maharashtra (458.7), Rajasthan (438.1) and Jammu & Kashmir (421.7).

Whereas states such as West Bengal (38.6), Jharkhand (52.2), Bihar (72.4), Mizoram (78.9) and Nagaland (82.9) are lying at the bottom of the list.

Uttar Pradesh’s hefty population of 21 crore people has also contributed in its low ranking in ‘test / million population’ list, but the fact that the state lies at the 3rd position in the list of highest number of hotspots in the country should be enough to alert the state administration to increase testing in the state.

The state though has recently taken the first step in the right direction by becoming the first country to start pool testing of corona virus samples.

Pool testing of corona samples started yesterday and 150 samples were divided into 30 pools of 5 each samples.

Principal Secretary health of state Amit Mohan Prasad said that this facility is being expanded in all districts and initially 5 samples will be pooled. In the pool testing method, multiple swab samples are pooled together and tested. If the result of a collection of samples comes negative, then that means all the samples in that group are negative.

However, if the result of one collection is found positive, then each of those samples is tested individually.

As of today, there are total 822 Coronavirus positive cases in Uttar Pradesh with 14 deaths.