K'taka clocking 50K+ COVID-19 tests/day, total tests cross 25 lakhs

Bengaluru: Steadily ramping up its testing capacity, Karnataka is clocking more than 50,000 tests per day, and has conducted more than 25 lakh so far, state Medical Education Minister K Sudhakar said on Wednesday.

“Karnataka has steadily ramped up it’s testing capacity increasing the number of labs from 02 to 108 today. In the last five days, we conducted 3,23,753 tests clocking more than 50,000 tests per day. Yesterday we crossed 25 lakh tests & so far we conducted 25,13,555 tests (sic),” Sudhakar tweeted.

Out of 25.13 lakh samples tested so far till last evening, 59,787 were tested on Tuesday alone, and among them, 24,587 were rapid antigen tests.

The Minister had recently said that the government plans to further enhance the testing to 75,000 per day soon.

Seen as a move aimed at increasing testing, Karnataka COVID task force had recently reduced the cost of the Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) tests by Rs 500.

The cost of RT-PCR tests for those referred from government hospitals to private labs have been reduced from Rs 2,000 to Rs 1,500 and for those going directly to private labs cost has been reduced to Rs 2,500 from Rs 3,000.

Aimed at ramping up the testing, the task force earlier this month had also decided to purchase 20 lakh new rapid antigen test kits and 18 lakh RT-PCR test kits.

As of August 25 evening, cumulatively 2.91 lakh COVID-19 positive cases have been confirmed in the State, which includes 4,958 deaths and 2,04,439 discharges.

Bengaluru Urban district tops the list of positive cases, with a total of 1.12 lakh infections.