India is preparing to scale-up testing capacity to 1 lakh per day – What will be the next step?

At the time of writing this article on 8^th April noon, the number of coronavirus-positive cases has crossed 5000 and reached 5,360. 164 people have died so far and 468 people have gone back to their homes after recovering from the deadly virus. As we enter into the last week of 3-week lockdown, the government is preparing to scale up testing in this “make-or-break week”. India has tested more than 1,40,000 individuals so far.

Testing numbers in India is very underwhelming. For a country with population over 130 crores, only 1,40,000 people being tested is way below than average number. Testing, Tracing, Treatment are very important if we want to curb the spread of coronavirus. Other countries have proved it that more testing you do, you have more chances to track the people and then put them under quarantine so that they couldn’t spread the virus to other people.

USA which has a population of around 34 crore has tested more than 20 lakhs people, Germany (8.3 crores) has tested more than 9 lakhs people, Italy (6 crores) has tested more than 7.5 lakhs of people, South Korea (5 crores) has tested more than 4.75 lakh people, Russia (14.5 crores) has tested over 9 lakhs people. Spain has a population of around 4.69 crores, has tested more than 3.5 lakh people, Canada has just 3.46 crores of total population and they have tested almost 3.5 lakh people.

Who knows India’s coronavirus-positive cases are way more than what it shows on records, because we have not tested them, we might not know about them? South Korea and Germany are a great example in front of us who have tested many people which made them understand about the hotspots in their country and helped them to take actions to stop the virus.

India to scale-up testing capacity

The biggest problem for India till now was the availability of testing kits. Now, that many private companies are also making testing kits, the central government is trying to provide testing kits to all the states according to the population and severity of coronavirus in that state. As per the reports, ICMR (Indian Council of Medical Research) is working to scale-up the testing capacity to 1 lakh per day which is about 18,000 at present.

While the world is still fighting with the pandemic, China seems to have contained the virus. Wuhan province in China, which is known as the epicentre of the outbreak, lifted lockdown today after 76 days. There are some restrictions in place for businesses, individuals, and schools. However, authorities have urged people to stay indoors. As per the reports of local media, more than 55,000 people are expected to leave the city by tonight.

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