Is Uttar Pradesh the next Bengal in testing for Coronavirus?

Bengal was rightly criticised for not testing enough. Bengal has now scaled up testing about 7000-8000 a day. The question now is if Uttar Pradesh is testing enough? This question is being asked because UP has added 550 cases in just 3 days between 15th and 17th May. This is almost double the previous 3 days.

UP is not Testing Enough, even compared to Bengal

Look at the number of tests UP and Bengal have carried out in the last 7 days

Uttar Pradesh – 42264

Bengal – 42452

It is almost the same number despite the fact that Uttar Pradesh has more than double of Bengal’s population and has more active coronavirus cases as well.

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Uttar Pradesh is one the least tested big States having carried out just 861 tests per million people, this is lower than Bengal at 943 per million

With low tests per million and simultaneous increase in number of cases, it can be rightly asked if UP was carrying out enough tests.

Is it a matter of concern?

At the moment, it is not a big concern

  1. Death rate is 4.1% of all complete cases. Which means detection is happening at the right time (Plus UP has a very young population). If you look at Bengal which was very slow in testing initially, death cases are a massive 20%.
  2. Second, there is no drop in incidence of Corona Cases in Testing indicating that Testing accuracy has not come down. This had happened in Tamil Nadu leading to a 7 fold in jump in cases in matter of days

That said, the UP Government must revisit its protocols or compare with other States and look at ways to scale up testing even faster. The testing is currently uneven, it was 9114 on Sunday, 3823 on Saturday, 6143 on Friday and 7100 on Thursday. Most other States keep scaling up consistently on a daily basis and not as haphazard as Uttar Pradesh.