UP's virus mgmt a model as state gets milestone of conducting 7 crore tests

Lucknow: Uttar Pradesh on Thursday achieved yet another benchmark of testing over 7 crore samples for novel coronavirus infection. Testing an average 3 lakh samples daily, Uttar Pradesh became the first state in the country to cross the milestone.

Early detection and isolation of potentially infectious individuals are the keys to successfully fighting a viral pandemic. Recognizing which the Yogi-led government in Uttar Pradesh effectively implemented and intensified the stringent 'Trace-Test-Treat' mechanism throughout the state.

Uttar Pradesh has been testing more than 3 lakh samples regularly which is over ten times more than the prescribed testing protocol for the state by the global health body World Health Organization.

The testing protocol by the WHO for Uttar Pradesh is 32,000 tests per day, whereas the Covid testing in the state has hovered between 300,000 and 250,000 of late.

Following the guidelines issued by the global health body, Uttar Pradesh adopted a master strategy of tracing, testing and treating the covid patients to reach the last mile within the state.

On the scale of testing samples per positive case, 6.4 tests per positive case were conducted in Maharashtra, 11.5 in Karnataka, 8 in Kerala, 14 in Delhi, 12.8 in Tamil Nadu and 11.4 tests per positive case in Andhra Pradesh, whereas, Uttar Pradesh has been able to conduct 39.9 tests per positive case.

Uttar Pradesh has come a long way from getting the first Covid test conducted from the lab at National Institute of Virology, Pune in 2020 to breaching the 7 crore tests-frontier that testifies the enlarged testing capacity in the state.

Importantly, the state government prioritized active surveillance while simultaneously building the health system capacity. It tapped into real-time information for early identification, breaking the disease transmission, and training public health authorities to undertake effective contact tracing. The state conducted house-to-house surveillance to detect all influenza like illness (ILI), tracked migrants consistently, and introduced pooled sampling, amongst other critical measures to strengthen the WHO-recommended 'trace-test-treat' strategy.

Despite being the most populous state in the country, UP has outperformed all other states including Delhi, Maharashtra and Rajasthan by conducting a total of 1.50 lakh RT-PCR tests on an average daily. Testing is the backbone for curbing the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 as it helps timely detection of

cases and their isolation and contact tracing.