AP govt claims it tops country in testing COVID-19 cases

Amaravati, Apr 22 (): The Andhra Pradesh government onWednesday claimed it topped the country in conducting the mostnumber of coronavirus tests per million population, clocking830. In all, 41,512 people were tested across the state so far,the Medical and Health Department said in a release. Of the total tests, 40,699 have turned negative so far,it said.

On Tuesday alone, 5,757 tests were conducted, including3,082 using TruNat machines that were actually used fortuberculosis testing.

No other state was conducting coronavirus tests on thisscale, the release claimed.

"The number of tests per million thus reached 830. With809, Rajasthan stood second behind AP in this regard,it said.

APs test numbers were, however, not uploaded on the ICMRwebsite though the government has been constantly sending thedata, the release added.

Official sources said they were unable to upload thestate data on the website as we were not given the logins.

On Monday, the state government released data, saying itconducted 715 tests per million. On April 16, state Special Chief Secretary (Health) K SJawahar Reddy put the per million tests number at 331.

"From just 230 tests per day at the beginning of thismonth, we are now doing about 5,700.

We went very aggressive on testing and hence theincreased numbers, a senior Health Department officialpointed out.

Our data is true, he said. The Andhra Pradesh government had on April 17 imported onelakh Rapid Test Kits (RTKs) from South Korea to step upCOVID-19 testing in the state.

These were the first bath of the one million RTKsordered by the state government.

With the use of RTKs, the result can be obtained in just10 minutes on whether or not a person carried the virus. DBV APRRAVINDRANATH APRRAVINDRANATH