The number of coronavirus tests conducted each day in India crossed 1 lakh on May 19, and average daily tests have grown more or less steadily since. But there is wide variation in testing among states, and there are three big testing mistakes that the states are making. Read on.
New Delhi, June 12:
Since the end of January, India has tested over 50 lakh people for coronavirus, which is the fourth highest number in the world, even though it is still in the lower half of the global distribution in tests relative to population. The number of tests conducted each day crossed 1 lakh on May 19, and average daily tests have grown more or less steadily since.
But there is wide variation in testing among states, and there are three big testing mistakes that the states are making.
The first mistake is that some states are testing too few people. Gujarat, for example, has the fourth-highest number of coronavirus cases in India, but ranks fifth from the bottom in terms of tests conducted per million population. Only the poorer states of Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Odisha fare worse than Gujarat in this index.
Gujarat is testing only 84 people per million population. Even Jharkhand, West Bengal and Chhattisgarh are doing better than that. By testing such few people, states jeopardise their chances of discovering new cases early.
The second mistake is that some states are testing too few people relative to cases. There are two important measures of testing – test positivity rate (TPR), which measures the share of tests that come out positive, and daily testing numbers per million people. Taken together, they give a sense of how a state fares in the battle against coronavirus.
Maharashtra and Gujarat seem to be in most trouble from this perspective, with high TPR and low daily testing. Delhi has the second-highest TPR (12 per cent) after Maharashtra (15.3 per cent), but it is testing relatively more people. In the last seven days, Delhi conducted 270 tests per million population and Maharashtra 111.
Goa and Jammu & Kashmir are testing most people and have among the lowest TPR. In the last seven days, Goa tested 990 people per million population and its TPR is 1.05 per cent. J&K conducted 571 tests per million population and its TPR is 1.84 per cent.
The third mistake is that some states are not ramping up testing. Most states have experienced a surge in new cases since mid-May. States with high cases such as Delhi and Gujarat are not responding to growing TPR by testing more, unlike Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu that have ramped up testing.
While Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu are conducting around 14,000 tests every day on an average, Delhi and Gujarat are testing less than 6,000 people on an average every day.
Gujarat in particular, and Delhi to a lesser extent, have largely flattened their testing curves, with daily tests growing little, and on days, even falling. Gujarat is conducting as many tests as Delhi despite having over three times the population. As of June 9, Gujarat conducted a total of 2,61,587 tests and Delhi 2,61,079.
