India has set a new landmark of conducting 3 crore COVID-19 tests on Monday, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare reported. 

Expanded diagnostic lab network and facilitation for easy testing across the country have given a substantial boost, the ministry stated in an official statement.

With 7,31,697 tests conducted in the last 24 hours, India is on its resolved drive to increase its testing capacity to 10 lakh tests daily. Building on this achievement, the Tests Per Million (TPM) have seen a sharp increase to 21,769. While the cumulative testing rose from 1.2 crores on July 14 to 3 crores on August 16, the positivity rate has seen a rise from 7.5% to 8.81% in the same period, the statement added.

The ministry further stated that a prominent determinant of the evolving testing strategy is the steadily widening diagnostic lab network in the country. This has significantly grown from one lab at Pune in early January 2020 to 1470 today, including 969 labs in the government sector and 501 private labs. These include:

• Real-Time RT PCR based testing labs: 754 (Govt: 450 + Private: 304)

• TrueNat based testing labs: 599 (Govt: 485 + Private: 114)

• CBNAAT based testing labs: 117 (Govt: 34 + Private: 83)