India's COVID-19 tally surpasses 8 million as testing capacity enhances

Source: Xinhua| 2020-10-29 19:43:56|Editor: huaxia
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by Pankaj Yadav

NEW DELHI, Oct. 29 (Xinhua) -- India's COVID-19 tally on Thursday surpassed the 8-million mark, reaching 8,040,203, according to the latest data released by the federal health ministry.

As many as 49,881 new COVID-19 cases were registered across the country over the past 24 hours.

With 517 deaths since Wednesday morning, the death toll in the country due to the pandemic reached 120,527.

Still there are 603,687 active COVID-19 cases in the country, while 7,315,989 people have recovered and been discharged from hospitals so far.

The Indian government has been ramping up COVID-19 testing facilities across the length and breadth of the country.

Till Wednesday a total of 106,563,440 COVID-19 tests were conducted in the country, out of which 1,075,760 tests were conducted on Wednesday alone, according to the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) on Wednesday.

According to the federal health ministry, India has demonstrated a consistent increase in the COVID-19 testing infrastructure since January resulting in an exponential increase in its testing numbers.

The country's testing capacities have been ramped up multiple times, as 1.5 million COVID-19 tests can be done every day now, said the ministry in a statement issued on Thursday.

Nearly 1.1 million tests have been conducted per day, on average, during the past six weeks, added the statement.

Comprehensive and widespread testing on a sustained basis has resulted in bringing down the positivity rate. The sharp decline in the national cumulative positivity rate has demonstrated that the rate of spread of infection is being effectively contained.

"The cumulative positivity rate has been falling progressively and has touched 7.54 percent as on Thursday," according to the ministry's statement.

It further stated that nearly 10 million COVID-19 tests were conducted in the last nine days, as the daily positivity rate stands at 4.64 percent.

As many as 79 percent of the new recovered cases are observed to be concentrated in ten states. The south-western state of Maharashtra has contributed the maximum with more than 8,000 single day recoveries, followed by the southern state of Kerala with more than 7,000 recoveries. Enditem

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