Puducherry government will scale up COVID-19 tests to 1,000 per day by next week in a bid to contain the growing number of cases in the Union Territory, Minister for Health and Family Welfare Malladi Krishna Rao has said.
“We are planning to increase testing to 1000 per day by next week. The testing rate has significantly gone up in the last two weeks. Currently, we are testing around 700 to 800 people per day,” the Minister told The Hindu.
Since the outbreak of pandemic, the government had tested 26,208 people in the Union Territory, he added.
Around 2,500 people were tested using the mobile lab launched by the Health Department last week. On Monday alone, around 300 people, including public, health workers, municipal staff and police personnel were tested at a mobile camp held at the Jawhar Bal Bhavan campus.
The mobile testing facility would be deployed to more places in the coming days, he added.
The Purchasing Committee of Health Department has initiated process to procure 9000 RT-PCR testing kits.
“The price of the testing kits has come down drastically in the last three months. In fact, there is a drop in price every month. So we have decided to procure the kits every month based on the requirement. This month we are planning to procure at least 9,000 kits by next week and increase the testing rate,” he said.
