COVID-19 tests breach two crore mark in Karnataka

Karnataka crossed another milestone in its pandemic-control measures with COVID-19 tests breaching the two crore mark on Wednesday. With 86,648 new samples tested in the last 24 hours, the total number of tests touched 2,00,08,072 on Wednesday.

The State had tested over one crore samples from March last year, when the pandemic hit Karnataka, to November 21, 2020. With this, Karnataka is the third State in the country — after Uttar Pradesh and Bihar — that has tested over two crore samples. With this, the cumulative test positivity rate touched 4.81% on Wednesday. From an average 80 tests a day in March 2020, the State till January 2021 tested an average of over one lakh samples a day. Testing was ramped up from May onwards. From a total of 2,310 tests in March, the State conducted nearly 16 lakh tests in August. This further went up to nearly 20 lakh tests in September. The tests per million went up from 44,099 on September 1 to 72,541 on September 30. On October 2, the State’s tests breached the 50 lakh mark, touching 50,89,730 and breached the one crore mark on November 21.