India has crossed a crucial milestone in the fight against COVID-19. For the first time, a record number of more than 10.5 lakh COVID tests have been conducted in a single day.

With 10,55,027 tests conducted in the last 24 hours, India has further strengthened the national diagnostic capacity of testing more than 10 lakh samples daily.

With this achievement, the cumulative tests have crossed 4.14 crore (4,14,61,636). The Centre, keeping in view the evolving global context of COVID-19, conceptualised and implemented the Continuum of Care strategy of “Test, Track and Treat” in close coordination with the State/UT governments. Pivoted on the strong pillar of aggressive testing, the positive cases are identified early which enables and ensures that their contacts are efficiently tracked in a timely manner. This is followed up with prompt isolation in home or facility setting for the mild and moderate cases, and hospitalisation for the severe and critical patients.

The exponential jump in the testing capacity and cumulative tests has resulted in an upsurge in the Tests Per Million. They stand at 30,044 today.

With more patients recovering and being discharged from hospitals and home isolation (in case of mild and moderate cases), India's COVID-19 total recoveries have crossed 27 lakh today. Recovery of 27,13,933 patients has been made possible because of effective implementation of the Centre conceived and led policy of TESTING aggressively, TRACKING comprehensively through timely surveillance of close contacts,& TREATING effectively through a widening medical care infrastructure across the country.

With the recovery of 64,935 cases in the last 24 hours, India's Recovery Rate amongst the COVID-19 patients has improved to 76.61% and is demonstrating a continuous progress. The number of patients recovering is on a steady rise over the past several months.

The number of recoveries in India yesterday exceeded the active cases by 3.55 times.

India has posted nearly 19.5 lakh (19,48,631) recoveries more than the active cases (765302, which are under active medical care). The record high recoveries have ensured that the actual caseload of the country viz. the active cases, continues to decline and currently comprises only 21.60% of the total positive cases. This has aided the fast widening gap between the number of patients recovered and the active cases.

Timely and effective clinical management of the patients in critical care through a slew of holistic measures has been instrumental in keeping the Case Fatality Rate low and on a steady downward trajectory. It has further dipped to 1.79% today.

WHO in its Guidance Note on “Public Health Criteria to Adjust Public Health and Social Measures in the Context of COVID-19” has advised comprehensive surveillance for suspected COVID-19 cases. WHO has advised that a country needs 140 tests/day/ million population. In another row of achievements, all State/UTs have crossed the advised number of tests. Several States have demonstrated better performance by registering Positivity Rate lower than the national average.

The TESTING strategy also ensured a steady expansion of the national lab network. Today, with 1003 labs in the government sector and 580 private labs, 1583 labs are providing comprehensive testing facilities to the people. These include:

• Real-Time RT PCR based testing labs: 811 (Govt: 463 + Private: 348)

• TrueNat based testing labs: 651 (Govt: 506 + Private: 145)

• CBNAAT based testing labs: 121 (Govt: 34 + Private: 87)