India tested 899,000 swab samples for the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) on Monday, a record for a single day, as it attempts to ramp up its testing capacity to 1 million daily by the end of August, according to official date released on Tuesday.

India has conducted 3,09,41,264 Covid-19 tests till date since the first swab sample was tested on January 23. There has been a three-fold increase in Covid-19 tests conducted since a month ago, when 10 million samples had been tested.

“A new peak of 8.99 lakh Covid-19 tests was done in the last 24 hours. Even with such a high level of testing, the positivity has remained low at 8.81% compared to the weekly national average of 8.84%,” said a statement by the Union ministry of health and family welfare (MoH&FW).

Aggressive testing leads to early identification and isolation of Covid-19 positive cases. The case fatality rate (CFR) is brought down through aggressive testing and efficient clinical treatment.

A continuous increase in average daily recoveries has led to India’s recovery rate — the patients who have a recovered as a proportion of those who tested positive — touching 73.18%, and a case fatality rate of 1.92%, shows health ministry data. About 30 states have CFR, deaths from the disease as a proportion of the case tally, below the national average.

“The current CFR, both in terms of daily or weekly average, has reduced to under 2%, but our aim is to bring down country’s CFR to 1% or below. If you look at last five days figures then the number of new cases as well deaths have seen a decline even though for a pandemic situation in a country as large as India past five days decline is not really that big a deal. However, it’s an encouraging trend,” said Union health secretary.Rajesh Bhushan.

From 64,000 new cases reported on August 13, the number dropped to 55,000 on Monday; and as opposed to 1,007 deaths reported on August 13, the country recorded 876 deaths on Monday.

The number of laboratories approved by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) for diagnosing Covid-19 has also seen a steady increase, experts said.

From a single laboratory, ICMR’s National Institute of Virology (NIV) in Pune, on January 23, to 160 labs on March 23, India has consistently expanded its lab network.

At present, the country has 1,476 approved laboratories, including 971 and 505 government and private facilities, respectively.

“Each day laboratories are being added to the network of Covid-19 testing facilities from across India. Now, we are doing up to 800,000 Covid-19 tests in a day and it is a significant achievement in such a short span of time. Besides laboratories in ICMR’s network, Covid-19 tests are being done in other government and privately-run facilities that are showing good results,” said an ICMR official, who did not wish to be identified.

The key focus areas that will help further consolidate the gains in terms of curtailing a surge in Covid-19 cases are preventive measures such as wearing a mask, maintaining physical distancing, adhering to hand hygiene and cough etiquette; strengthening the containment and surveillance strategy in terms of testing and contact tracing, and clinical management that would require timely access to ambulance services for transporting severely sick patients and increasing the number of hospital beds.

“We have got reassuring trends in terms of recovery and mortality rate and testing numbers, and it seems like we have got hold over pandemic control but the need is to not get lax and make an effort towards consolidating gains,” said Dr VK Paul, member (health), Niti Aayog.

“There is still a large number of susceptible population in the country; therefore, the challenge to fight the disease effectively is still very much there,” he added.

On post Covid-19 recovery complications, Paul said it wasn’t an alarming situation, and the medical fraternity was monitoring it closely.

“It is a new virus and post Covid-19 complications such as respiratory distress, fibrosis and immunological symptoms in children, is a new dimension of the disease that is being seen. We are studying it; and it is an ongoing learning process. However, there’s no need to be dangerously alarmed at this stage,” Paul added.

Many states such as West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh and Odisha are making use of Covid-19 survivors as volunteers.

“These volunteers are being used for generating community awareness about the disease; promote help-seeking behaviour so that treatment is sought in time and supply food and other essentials among patients in hospitals, and also help healthcare workers on ground,” said Bhushan.