NEW DELHI: It's a matter of a few days and the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) would be able to meet its target of conducting over one lakh tests in a day as the number of tests conducted in a single day crossed 94,000-mark on Saturday.
With 94,325 tests in the last 24 hours, India on Saturday conducted total 21,34,277 tests. It's must to mention here that Millennium Post had first reported on April 6 that the ICMR has set a target to conduct one lakh tests in a day. Notably, Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan had also assured the country on May 9 that testing capacity for COVID-19 was scaled up to around 95,000 tests every day. Commenting on the development, a senior ICMR official said, "We focused on strengthening the testing facilities across the country for the timely collection of samples. As of now, we have established total 511 laboratories which include 362 ICMR network labs and 149 private labs for conducting RT-PCR tests." After analysing the day- wise data of tests conducted by the ICMR, it has come to the fore that the apex research institute had crossed the 80,000-mark of testing in a day on May 5, which rose to above 90,000 on May 13.
In the last 10 days, 8,57,499 tests were conducted by the ICMR that accounts to 40 per cent of the total samples tested so far. Also, maximum 94,671 samples were tested on May 13 and minimum 64,651 on May 11 in the last 10 days.