State crosses 6 crore Covid test mark; third highest in country

Shyam Sundar Vattam | NT

Bengaluru: Karnataka which has always been aggressive in testing, crossed 6 crore Covid-19 tests on Saturday. Congratulating all the healthcare workers and the district officials, Health and Family Welfare Minister Dr.K.Sudhakar said that extensive testing has always been a corner stone of the fight against the pandemic.

When the pandemic started in early 2020, NIV units were used to conduct tests. State used to send samples to NIV centres in Pune. Karnataka gradually established labs across the state and now Karnataka has about 268 testing facilities including 99 government and 169 private labs. Karnataka has tested 6,01,14,815 samples so far including 1,14,12,162 Rapid Antigen Test and 4,87,02,653 RT-PCR tests. While 1,41,96,065 samples were tested in 2020, 4,23,91,357 samples were tested in 2021 and so far 35,27,393 tests have been conducted in 2022.

Speaking to the media about Karnataka crossing 6 crore tests milestone Dr.Sudhakar said, “ Testing plays a vital role in this battle against the pandemic. Karnataka has always been aggressive in testing and tracking and it has been one of our cornerstones in this fight against Covid. Karnataka has now achieved another milestone by crossing 6 crore tests. I congratulate all our healthcare workers and district administration on this remarkable feat.”

Testing Capacity

Both the Health and Family Welfare and Medical Education departments have always religiously followed the 5T strategy of test, track, trace, triaging and technology. We have set up 3,678 (3,102 govt and 666 private) swab collection centres, which is one each for every 20,000 population. We have labs in Govt hospitals, medical colleges and also private hospitals. Initially only 10-12 government labs had Covid testing facility which has now increased to 57. With 108 NA Extractors and 139 RTPCR machines we have capacity to test 1,20,800 samples per day in govt facilities.

After the Omicron variant was found, we mandated that at least 2% of the tests should be conducted at airports. Then we increased the target to about 80,000 to 1 lakh samples per day.

Testing of children

Since it was opined that third wave could predominantly affect children, we have decided to conduct at least 2% of the tests on children. Out of the total tests conducted between December 1 and January 20, 29% of the tests are conducted on children. We are also conducting random RAT tests in schools, colleges, restaurants once in every 15 days.