Will intensify testing to conduct over 25 lakh tests per day, says Harsh Vardhan on Covid combat strategy

As the daily COVID-19 cases continue to see a steady decline, Union Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan on Wednesday said that the government aims to ramp up daily testing to 25 lakh per day.

During his visit to Delhi’s Safdarjung Hospital to review COVID-19 preparedness today, he said, “Yesterday, we conducted the highest COVID tests in the world as we tested more than 20 lakh samples in India. Soon we’ll take the numbers to 25 lakh per day.”

According to the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), India has tested 32,03,01,177 samples for Covid-19 till May 18 out of these, 20,08,296 samples were tested on Tuesday.

He visited the new PSA plant installed at Safdurjung hospital and a makeshift hospital with 46 beds in the premises.
“With the help of Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) a new PSA plant has been installed in record time here. Another plant of 2 Metric Tonnes (MT) capacity will be installed here within 1 month,” said Harsh Vardhan.

The health minister said that a 46-bed makeshift hospital including 32 ICU beds and 14 oxygen beds with the help of CISR.

He also remembered the corona warriors including doctors, nurses and journalists who died due to COVID-19 during treatment.

India recorded the highest single-day COVID-19 fatalities with 4,529 new deaths in the last 24 hours, according to the Union Health Ministry’s data on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, India’s daily spike of coronavirus cases remained below the 3 lakh mark for the third consecutive day as only 2,67,334 fresh infections were recorded during a 24-hour period.

At present, the cumulative caseload stands at 2,54,96,330, including 32,26,719 active cases, 2,19,86,363 recoveries and 2,83,248 deaths.