25 Nov , 2021 By : monika singh
Worried about declining testing numbers and increasing positivity, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has written to 13 states and union territories to increase testing, especially in districts showing increasing positivity.
Secretary (health and family welfare) Rajesh Bhushan has written to health secretaries of Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Kerala, Punjab, West Bengal, Nagaland, Sikkim, Manipur, Goa, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh red-flagging the decline in average daily testing numbers. Bhushan has written that though the number of Covid-19 cases has come down to a daily average of 10,195, the number of tests has been declining. Bhushan emphasised the need for increasing daily testing numbers, especially after the festival season.
Kerala, which is still reporting high number of cases, has reported 56,071 average daily tests for the week ended November 22. Kerala had conducted 2,96,021 average daily tests in the week to August 15. "It is also worrying to note that the state has recorded a high positivity of 9.7% in the week ended November 22," Bhushan has written, pointing out, "several districts are reporting unacceptably high positivity rates over the past 4 weeks. The positivity in Wayanad, Kozhikode, Thiruvananthapuram Kottayam, Idukki, Kollam and Kannur have been over 10% combined with a decrease in testing."
Similar decline has been seen in Maharashtra where the tests have gone down from 2,68,501 in the week ended May 23 to 97,502 in week ended November 22, Punjab (71,257 to 24,300 in November 22) and Rajasthan (84,266 in the week of July 12-18 to 14,168 in the week ending November 22.
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