Comprehensive, High Testing Pivotal In Curbing COVID-19: Health Ministry

New Delhi , November 13: The Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) on Friday said that the strategy to curb the chain of COVID-19 transmission was in comprehensive and high testing across the nation.

“Comprehensive and high testing is pivotal in the strategy to curb the chain of transmission. From a few tests in January, India has scaled a high of more than 12 crore total tests in November,” MoHFW said.

According to the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), a total of 12,31,01,739 samples have been tested for coronavirus up to November 12, of these, 11,39,230 samples were tested yesterday.

The trend of daily new recoveries outnumbering daily new cases continued for the 41st day with 49,079 new recoveries registered yesterday.

According to the Health Ministry, India has so far conducted the second-highest number of Covid detection tests in the world. The Ministry data on November 10 showed the country had done 11.96 crore tests, out of which 49 percent were rapid antigen tests while 46 percent were RT-PCR tests. The remaining 5 percent of tests were performed using tuberculosis (TB) testing platforms — CB NAAT and TRUE NAAT.

The RT-PCR tests remain the most accurate for Covid-19 testing. Meanwhile, RAT is preferred for mass-scale testing because of its high sensitivity and is cheaper.

The test can easily detect true positive test but has limitations in detecting true negative cases.