Assam to conduct 1 lakh coronavirus tests from Wednesday: Himanta Biswa Sarma

Himanta Biswa Sarma has said that from August 12 onwards, the state department shall be eyeing to conduct a minimum of 1 lakh tests per day
Image for representation

Image for representation

Guwahati: Assam finance and health minister Himanta Biswa Sarma has said that from August 12 onwards, the state department shall be eyeing to conduct a minimum of 1 lakh coronavirus tests per day, reports said.

As per reports, the state government, in its bid to arrest the spread of the pathogen, is now planning to conduct 60,000 tests per million tests by the end of the month.

According to reports, Sarma has said that the state government plans to complete a large number of tests per million by the end of August. This, he opined, shall enable the health department to separate the COVID-19 positive persons from the rest of society and prevent the situation from spiraling further out of control.

At the same time, Sarma has placed great emphasis on ramping up the number of tests and taking the figure closer to a lakh. Assam has so far conducted nearly 14 lakh tests, with the daily average hovering around the 60,000-case mark.

Sarma's emphasis on raising the number of tests echoes the sentiment of Prime Minister Narendra Modi who in a meeting today with the Chief Ministers of several states said that testing is one of the keys to defeating the dreaded virus.

The average fatality rate has been continuously decreasing while the recovery rate is increasing every day, this shows that measures being taken by us are in the right direction, Modi said in the meeting with the CMs of Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Telangana, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, and West Bengal.

Although Assam's COVID-19 numbers are increasing rapidly on a daily basis, the "positivity rate" remains quite low. Assam registered 2,900 more cases on Monday, August 11.. Notably, Assam has the third-lowest mortality rate in the country at 0.24 percent and a recovery rate of above 70 percent.

Top Headlines

No stories found.
Sentinel Assam
www.sentinelassam.com