"The total number of samples tested so far is 60,63,568 in the state," Nitish Kumar said (File)
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Tuesday said that the state has tested 1.94 lakh samples for coronavirus in a single day which is the country's highest.
The number of tests per million in Bihar is 47,482, which is more than the national average of 47,337, he said.
Stating that the state government has taken plenty of measures to curb the spread of the pandemic, Nitish Kumar said that its efforts to increase the testing rate have helped in identifying and isolating the positive cases.
"The latest figure for samples tested on September 21 is 1,94,088 in Bihar. I don''t think that such a huge number of tests has been conducted in any of the states in the country.
"The total number of samples tested so far is 60,63,568 in the state," Mr Kumar said.
Of the 1,94,088 tests conducted on Monday, he said that 11,732 were examined through RT-PCR, 3,982 through TrueNat and the remaining 1,78,374 were done by antigen testing.
Nitish Kumar said that RT-PCR tests will be ramped up to 23,000 per day once the state gets testing machines from the Centre apart from what it has bought for the purpose.
He was speaking at a function to inaugurate, lay foundation stones, and start of work of over several hundreds of schemes and projects in Bihar.
The percentage of people who have been cured of COVID-19 in Bihar is more than 91 per cent, Mr Kumar said, adding that the state has fared well in terms of recovery of people and testing per million.
"But we should not be either happy or complacent with the figures as no one knows what will happen in future or when things will start getting worse... We have seen it in Delhi, where the cases of COVID-19 declined and then started witnessing a surge, the chief minister said.
"We don't need to be scared but I request people to remain alert and vigilant. Follow the COVID-19 protocols," he said.
The chief minister said that doctors, nurses, paramedical staff, police personnel, self help groups, "Jeevika" workers and administrative officials have worked hard to help in reducing the positive cases.
"Jeevika" workers are those who have been enrolled in the Bihar Rural Livelihoods Project.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)