"Enough To Cover Long Period Of Time": Government On COVID-19 Test Kits

India conducted 21,000 coronavirus tests on Monday, bringing the total to 2.31 lakh, the government said on Tuesday, adding that the country has enough test kits to "cover for a very long time". The number of isolation beds and Intensive Care Units (ICUs) are also being increased around the country as the situation evolves, the Health Ministry said.

Addressing the daily briefing, Lav Agarwal, the joint secretary in the Ministry of Health, said 1,211 new coronavirus cases and 31 deaths were reported in the last 24 hours, taking the number of cases to 10,363 and deaths to 339 in the country.

"We have kits that could last for 6 weeks. Now we have received another instalment of RT-PCR (reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction) test kits to cover ourselves for a pretty long period of time. Additionally we are ordering 33 lakh kits for RT-PCR and 37 lakh rapid kits are expected at any time now," he said.

A total of 602 hospitals have been marked as dedicated COVID-19 facilities in coordination with states with a capacity of over 1 lakh isolation beds and 12,000 ICUs beds reserved for such patients in the country, the Health Ministry said.

The government said that to break the virus chain in a particular area, not a single case should be reported from there for at least 28 days.

"If no case is reported for 28 days from a particular area, we can say that we have been able to break the chain of transmission there," officials said.

Speaking about the number of daily tests, a senior official of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) said, "We have tested 2.31 lakh samples, so far, including 21,635 samples yesterday. Out of these 18,644 were done in ICMR network of labs. We have enough kits to cover for a very long time."

Although the number of coronavirus cases in India are small compared with hard-hit Western nations, health experts fear that is because of India's low levels of testing, and actual infection levels could be far higher. India's daily tests fall far short of countries like the US which conducts 1.25 lakh coronavirus tests per day.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday questioned the government's efforts at increasing coronavirus testing, as tweeted, "India delayed the purchase of testing kits & is now critically short of them. With just 149 tests per million Indians, we are now in the company of Laos (157), Niger (182) & Honduras (162). Mass testing is the key to fighting the virus. At present we are nowhere in the game (sic)."