Over 9 lakh COVID-19 samples tested per day for two consecutive days

India has tested more than 9 lakh COVID-19 samples each day for the second consecutive day, keeping a sharp focus on "Test, Track and Treat" strategy of the Union Government, Health Ministry said on Friday.

The country has already created a capacity of doing 10 lakh tests per day and 9,01,338 samples were tested in the last 24 hours, the ministry said in a release.

It said that with this steady rise, the cumulative tests are nearing four crore and more than one crore samples have been tested for COVID in the past two weeks.

The tests per million too have seen a sharp surge to 28,607, the release said.

It said that the graded and evolving response has resulted in a testing strategy that steadily widened the testing net in the country.

"To keep up with this strategy, the testing lab network in the country is continuously strengthened which as on today consists of 1564 labs in the country - 998 labs in the government sector and 566 private labs.

"These include Real-Time RT PCR based testing labs 801 (government: 461 + private: 340), TrueNat based testing labs 643 (government: 503 + private: 140), CBNAAT based testing labs 120 (government: 34 + private: 86)," the release said.

The country has witnessed a record single-day spike of 77,266 coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours, according to the data of the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MOHFW) on Friday.

With 1,057 more deaths in the last 24 hours, the cumulative toll reached 61,529.

India has reported the highest single-day caseload in the world every day since Aug. 7, a Reuters tally showed, and is the third-most affected country behind only the United States and Brazil.

The Union Health Ministry informed that more than three-fourth of cases have recovered in the past 5 months and less than one-fourth are active.

"In the past 5 months, more than 3/4 of cases have recovered and less than 1/4 are active now. Effective implementation of the Centre's strategic and graded TEST-TRACK-TREAT approach has led to higher recoveries and lower fatality," MOHFW tweeted.