New Delhi: India is continuously stepping up it’s COVID testing capacity. In the last 24 hours, the country moved closer to testing one million samples in a day. With a record testing of 8,68,679 samples in a day, the nation achieved another milestone today.

The Union Health Ministry informed that the remarkable feat has been achieved by rigorously following the ‘Test, Track and Treat’ strategy.

It said that the strong resolve and determination of the Union government along with governments in States and Union Territories to follow aggressive testing as the first important step in the early detection and isolation of COVID-19 cases has resulted in rapidly increasing the number of tests done per day.

The week-wise average daily tests conducted has witnessed a sharp increase from around 2.3 lakh in the first week of July 2020 to more than 7 lakh in the current week.

The cumulative testing done so far in the country now stands at 2,85,63,095 tests.

Government said that the strong determinant of this milestone has been a sustained expansion of testing labs across the country.

From merely one lab in January this year, the country today has 1,465 labs. Out of these 968 are government labs while the remaining 497 are private labs.