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The second wave of Covid infections is even more deadly than the first, with the country registering more than three lakh cases on a daily basis over the past few days.
The number of tests conducted, has also been on the rise throughout April. The number of daily tests hit a record high on April 23 with 17,53,569 tests. And this surge in testing is more than required to contain the rampant increase in the number of infections across several pockets in India.
Test positivity rate
The test positivity rate ((the number of confirmed cases/tests conducted)*100) for the top States with the highest active caseload ranges between 19 and 23 per cent. For instance, Maharashtra, which has the highest number of active cases in the country, had a test positivity rate of 21.9 per cent on April 26. Uttar Pradesh, which comes nextwith the second-highest number of active cases, had 19 per cent test positivity rate, while Karnataka’s and Kerala’s stood at 17.9 per cent and 22.7 per cent respectively.
Data from Covid-9 India showed that these States that have the highest number of active cases were also testing the most. For instance, Maharashtra’s active cases stood at 6,74,770 on April 26, and in the April 1 – April 26 period, the State had also conducted the highest number of tests cumulatively, when compared to the other States. Likewise, Uttar Pradesh’s active caseload stood at 3,04,199 on April 26, and it had conducted 50,34,859 tests from April 1 – April 26, the highest after Maharashtra.
India tops in tests
Among the top countries with the highest number of infections, India has conducted the highest number of tests in April. From April 1 – 22, India had conducted 29,647,032 tests (per Covid-19 India data) vis-à-vis, the US at 25,386,045 and France at 8,277,012 tests ( per data from Our World in Data).
It is imperative to keep testing as much as possible to rein in the increasing number of infections, because, as the World Health Organization states, testing is key to identify people who are infected with virus, so they can be isolated, their contacts can be traced, and further transmission can be prevented.
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