Covid-19 testing drops even as daily cases rise to three-month high

Despite India’s daily Covid-19 cases touching a three-month high with 7,240 cases on Thursday, laboratory testing of the viral infection has not gained momentum.

Testing volumes have not grown much nationally, though individual states show some improvement.

An analysis of data from independent tracker covid19bharat.org shows that the national 7-day moving average number of tests has dropped 15.4 per cent from around 443,471 on May 15 to 375,145 on June 7 (see chart 1).

There had been more than four times that number — as many as 1.7 million tests daily — in the early part of the year when cases