One in six being tested, says Govt

Jammu: A total of 19,29,126 COVID-19 tests have been conducted in Jammu and Kashmir so far, an official said, highlighting that every sixth person has been tested for the infection in the Union Territory.
Jammu and Kashmir has done 1,90,735 tests per million population for SARS-COV2, which is second highest among the major states and UTs after Delhi having 2,28,443 tests per million population, Financial Commissioner, Health and Medical Education Department, Atal Dulloo told PTI on Friday.
A total of 19,29,126 people have been tested for coronavirus so far and of them, 18,43,069 tested negative and only 86,057 tested positive for the infection, the official said.
According to the official, 75,641 patients have recovered from the infection till now.
"Every sixth person has been tested for COVID-19 infection with aggressive testing strategy in Jammu and Kashmir," Dulloo said.
He said each district of Jammu and Kashmir has done more than one lakh tests per million population, which is higher than the national 74,231 tests done per million population.
"The UT has been doing more than 25,000 tests per day and has done 19.3 lakh tests till now. Our daily test done per million population per day is around 2,000 which is much higher than the national average of 850 tests per million population per day and far ahead of WHO recommended at least 140 tests per million per day," the FC added.
The aggressive testing strategy adopted by the UT has helped in early detection of cases and minimising deaths due to the disease, Dulloo said.
"The UT had only one ICMR approved functional laboratory till March 15, 2020, and within the next 15 days, six ICMR approved laboratories were made functional in J-K," he added.
Dulloo said to further enhance the testing, private laboratories were also roped in.
"At present, 11 ICMR approved government laboratories have been established along with this the UT had started Rapid Point of Care tests which also proved to be a game changer as they helped in early detection," he said.
"The doubling time of cases which was alarming at around 19 days in August has declined to 95 days now. The recovery rate has also improved to 88 per cent with only 10.5 per cent people having active disease," he said.