Niti Aayog’s Amitabh Kant says lockdown is helping as positive cases are at 4.7% of those tested

• Amitabh Kant, CEO of the government think tank Niti Aayog says that the positive cases detected during testing in India have remained low — despite the increase in testing.
  
• The analysis shared by Kant shows that India’s positive cases as a percentage of total tests stood at 4.7%.
  
• But this does not pass over the fact that the figures account for merely 177 tests per million — that’s as low at 0.0177%.
  
• However, experts believe that to be ‘modest for a court of the size of 1.3 billion’ adding that more tests need to be conducted.

Amitabh Kant, CEO of the government think tank Niti Aayog says that positive Covid-19 cases detected during testing in India have remained low — despite the increase in testing.

“Despite increased testing our percentage of positive cases is still low compared to others. India’s strong measures on travel restrictions, social distancing, janta curfew and lockdown have paid dividends. Social distancing has to be the new norm,” Kant said in a tweet.

The country-by-country analysis shared by Kant, shows the positive cases as a percentage of total tests. As per this data, India’s infection rate with regard to the total tests conducted is at 4.7%. That’s 11,555 of the 239,127 tests conducted so far.

But this does not cover for the fact that the figures account for merely 177 tests per million — that’s as low as 0.0177%.

However, experts say that India needs to ramp up testing to contain Coronavirus, which has already infected over 12,000 people and killed 414, as per the data by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.

According to the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), India tested over 2.4 lakh samples for Coronavirus on April 14 — up from 2.17 lakh a day before. Experts believe that to be ‘modest for a court of the size of 1.3 billion,’ adding that more tests need to be conducted.

But Kant argues that “the low test counter argument is not valid; if the infection rate across the world is similar then all else equal, the ratio of positive cases and total tests conducted should be roughly the same.”

It also reveals that France tops the list with nearly 42% positive cases against 342,638 tests conducted in the country as of now. It is followed by Spain and Iran at 29% and 26% respectively as the positive cases. The two countries have also seen several thousands of fatalities due to the global pandemic.


“A case in point is Germany, which has the highest testing rate per million population and yet remains at 10%,” the report noted. This reiterates the expert take on the current situation in India.

"Priority will be to test our admitted patients and new patients being brought in. And front-line healthcare workers. India is doing a lot of tests, but it is not enough compared to what the US and Singapore and other countries are doing,” Sandeep Budhiraja, group medical director at Max Healthcare told news agency PTI.

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