India needs to step up coronavirus testing, say experts
Testing kits
The death toll due to coronavirus rose to 414 and the number of cases to 12,380 in the country on Thursday. While the ratio of deaths to the number of cases remains low, people doubt apt number of tests are not being carried out.
To this end, experts have said India needs to ramp up the number of tests done across the country to trace COVID-19 infection.
Out of 12,380, the number of active COVID-19 cases is 10,477, as many as 1,488 people have been cured and discharged and one had migrated.
Data obtained from the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) said, till April 14, the number of samples tested stood at 2,44,893, an increase of 27,339 from the corresponding figure till the previous day (2,17,554). Experts feel the figures are modest for a count of the size of 1.3 billion and "much more number of tests" are needed to combat COVID-19 outbreak in the country.
According to worldometers, the US, where over 26,000 COVID-19 deaths have occurred, has done 31,00,387 tests averaging about 9,367 per million of population.
The figures for India is 2,44,893 tests averaging 177 per million of population.
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Spain and Italy, two countries which have also seen several thousands of fatalities, have done 6,00,000 and 10,73,689 tests respectively.
In India, the number of samples tested till March 28 stood at 27,688, a rise of 7,038 from the corresponding figure till March 27, according to ICMR data.
India is doing lot of tests, but it is not enough compared to what the US and Singapore and other countries are doing, one of the experts said, adding, "much more testing needs to be done".
Two kinds of diagnostic tests are being currently used in India -- RT-PCR test and rapid antibodies test, according to global health norms.
A reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test is a laboratory technique combining reverse transcription of RNA into DNA that detects the virus while the antibody tests, which use blood, detect the body's response to the virus.
In Delhi, which has seen 1561 cases and 30 deaths till April 14, over 16,000 samples had been tested till that period.