NEW DELHI, – With nearly 8.25 lakh average Covid-19 tests every day, India has further increased its testing capacity to effectively fight coronavirus, which infected more than 32.34 lakh people and took away lives of 59,449 others in the country so far.

The centre in collaboration with the state governments and UTs have consistently ramping up its testing infrastructure under the centre-led policy of ‘Test-Track-Treat” to touch a capacity of 10 lakh tests per day, India’s health ministry sources said here today.

An official release however, said that India is going to further scale up its testing capacity as early identification of Covid-19 infection through timely and aggressive testing play a vital role to fight the pandemic.

India’s expanded diagnostic lab network and facilitation for easy testing across the country have given a substantial boost of Covid-19 testing. Building on this achievement, the Tests Per Million (TPM) have seen a sharp rise to 27,284, according to health ministry sources.

Besides, the official data showed that the cumulative Covid-19 testing as on date in India has reached 3,76,51,512 with the 8,23,992 tests, which were conducted in the last 24 hours.

Officials said that such high level of testing on a sustained basis leads to early diagnosis, which provides opportunities to isolate or hospitalise the positive cases adequately in advance and helps lower mortality rates.

Besides, Delhi state government following a spike in the number of new cases of the coronavirus disease, has announced doubling the Covid-19 testing from its existing 20,000 per day aimed at effectively fight the pandemic.

According to official statement, the India’s total coronavirus cases have been registered at 32,34,474 with 67,151 new cases recorded during the last 24 hours. Besides, the total death toll due to the pandemic rose to 59,449 with 1059 fresh single day fatalities.

India emerges as the second highest country after the United States of America (56,82,811 cases) in terms of coronavirus infection. India is followed by South Africa (6,11,450 cases), Maxico (5,63,705 cases) and Chile (400,985 cases).

According to WHO statistics, a total of 23,69,7273 people have been infected by the coronavirus disease across the globe. Of which, 8,14,438 patients were died due to the Covid-19 infection.