Karnataka ramps up Covid-19 testing capacity to 11,000 a day

BENGALURU: Karnataka notched yet another feat in its fight against the spread of Covid-19 by conducting more than 11,000 tests in a single day.
The ramping up of testing capacity, which comes at a time when the state is witnessing a steady rise in the number of Covid positive cases, is a pointer to the state government’s resolve to trace-and-test Covid patients before they unknowingly spread the virus to others.
Medical education minister (also in-charge of Covid-19 issues) K Sudhakar said: “We had planned to increase the testing capacity to 10,000 tests per day by May 31. But we conducted 11,449 tests on Thursday itself, ten days prior to the deadline that we had set for ourselves. Karnataka has been managing the pandemic in a far better way compared to other states and is being hailed as a model state for the measures taken by it to contain the spread of Covid.”
In fact, Karnataka has made a remarkable turnaround with regard to its testing capacity in the last two months. Sample this: The state had registered 10 tests on March 22 and scaled it to 382 on April 2 and to 3,279 on April 22 to 11,449 tests on May 22.
“We are now at a very high level of testing, we are one of the top five states in the country with regard to number of Covid tests done per million population,” Sudhakar said. As on Thursday, Karnataka has clocked an average of 2,728 Covid tests per million population; much higher than the national average of 1,788 tests per million population.
Karnataka has done a total of 1.83 lakh Covid tests so far; a majority of the 36 testing laboratories currently functional are located in Bengaluru. “But even labs in other districts are ramping up testing capabilities. Kalaburagi district, which recorded the first Covid-related death in the state, did 1,142 tests on Thursday. Labs in Shivamogga and Mangaluru are also doing more tests,” Sudhakar said and added: “We have decided to increase the number of testing labs to 60 by the end of this month.”
Though the state has been seeing a spike Covid positive cases in the last four days health experts maintain that the situation is still under control. Data analysis by the State Covid-19 War Room of Covid positive cases on Thursday showed that 80 per cent of transmission was triggered by people with domestic travel history, especially returnees from Maharashtra. On Friday noon, the state reported 105 new positive cases; 84 of these had travel history to Maharashtra. A huge chunk of these Covid patients, 44 of them, were from Chikkaballapur district.
The biggest challenge is in tracking the returnees what with domestic flights all set to resume operations from May 25. “We will be coming out with new strategies that will be focused on monitoring the returnees and conducting more tests,” Sudhakar said.