Bhopal: Government, outsourced testing centers conduct 30,000 tests each in state

BHOPAL (Madhya Pradesh): The government and outsourced testing centres have been conducting 30,000 Covid tests each daily in the state since January 1 while health department has increased RT-PCR tests by 20,000--25,000 from the beginning of the year, officials said.

About 50,000 samples were collected for RT-PCR testing during lean period of corona. When third wave intensified, health department increased sampling and now as many as 79,000 samples are collected daily for testing.

According to official, 30,000 samples are tested in government testing centres while other 30,000 samples are tested in outsourced testing centres. Together, 60,000 samples are tested daily. Remaining samples are sent to labs, which were earlier outside but now working in Madhya Pradesh. Besides fever clinics, samples are collected everywhere. So, number of sample collection centres are not fixed.

Covid positivity rate increased tremendously in Madhya Pradesh, according to state health bulletin. There was rise from 9.7% reported on January 19, 12 % reported on January 21.

Bhopal reported 35.2 % positivity rate on January 20, 25.4% on January 21 followed by Indore with 24.7%. Ujjain and Jabalpur reported around 9.0% on January 20. Indore reported 26.8% positivity rate on January 21.

According to health bulletin on January 20, Bhopal sent 5,650 samples and out of them 1,991 tested positive, so the positivity rate is 35.2%. As many as 11,487 samples were sent for testing while 2,838 of them tested positive, so the positivity rate is 24.7% on January 20.

State level samples, positivity rate

Dates No of samples Covid+ve Positivity rate

Jan 19 77,414 7597 9.8%

Jan 20 80,002 9385 11.7%

Jan 21 79,779 9603 12.0%

Bhopal's samples and positivity rate are as follow

Dates No of samples Covid+ve Positivity rate

Jan19 7290 1710 23.4%

Jan 20 5650 1991 35.2%

Jan 21 8291 2107 25.4%