Even as the government celebrates the over 40% fall in fresh Covid-19 cases over the last month — from 83,875 to 48,459 (see graphic) — A Velumani, CMD & CEO of Thyrocare Technologies, told CNBC-TV18 that many state governments were controlling the amount of testing being done so as to be able to show lower infections (https://bit.ly/3kFeAv8), reports fe Bureau in New Delhi. “In some states”, he said, “Thyrocare has been told not to pick up samples, verbally, in others, ‘don’t report to ICMR, reverse the data, we will tell you the cut-off, then you report’.” The Covid testing for Thyrocare, he said, was down to 2,500 per day from 7,000 two months ago.
While the number of tests India conducts has gone up by 9.4% between September 28 and October 28, it fell 15.2% in Gujarat, 35.3% in Maharashtra, 15.3% in Punjab, 17.2% in Bihar etc; it rose 59.5% in Karnataka, 10.7% in Kerala and 31.8% in Madhya Pradesh though.
What also needs to be kept in mind is the high share of Rapid Antigen Tests (RAT) in the test since RAT detect less infections than the RT-PCR ones. Around 75% of Delhi’s daily tests are RAT and the figure is 90% for Bihar, 75% for Kerala and 67% for West Bengal.
