Assam has conducted 10 lakh COVID-19 tests, confirms Himanta Biswa Sarma

Guwahati: Months after the dreaded coronavirus disease officially landed on India shores, the Himanta Biswa Sarma-led Assam health department has been able to do the seemingly improbable – conduct over 1 million (or 10 lakh) tests!

"Assam achieves an incredible feat of a million #COVID19 tests! Setting up 1st lab in Feb, which grew to 17 rapidly, our teams have done extraordinary work in reaching the 10 lakh mark in a little over 8 weeks. The last 1 lakh came in just 3 days. Remarkable! (sic)", Assam health minister Himanta Biswa Sarma wrote in a tweet.

Providing the break-up, the minister revealed that at present, a lakh tests are being conducted in 3 days. In contrast, Assam took 114 days to conduct its first 1 lakh tests. At present, the State Government is conducting tests in 17 labs across Assam.

The number of tests in the state has been ramped up considerably after the rise in the number of coronavirus cases across the state; in fact, a proverbial "boom" drove the Assam state government to quickly impose lockdowns in several pockets of the state where the virus rate was high.

Prior to this, there was the much-vaunted 'Assam model' of tackling the coronavirus cases even before it reared its ugly in the state. Even before a single case was reported, the state undertook strict measures to ready itself for an "explosion" of cases.

Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, who has always been at the forefront of the battle against the dreaded virus, took an initiative to set up 1,000 bedded quarantine facilities, most notably at the Sarusajai stadium in Guwahati.

Once the virus arrived and entrenched itself on Assamese soil, the Government's focus has been on ramping up the testing infrastructure to isolate the virus cases and proffer treatment. In its most ambitious testing drive yeat, the Assam state government on Tuesday, August 4, plans to conduct as many as 50,000 tests in a single day.

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