COVID-19: Positivity rates of states spike as India detects a million cases
The higher positivity rate of COVID-19 in certain states indicate that the infection may take a while to come under control. Maharashtra, Telangana, and Delhi have the highest test positivity rates among all the states and the maximum caseload too.
The test positivity rate (TPR) is calculated as the percentage of positive samples among the total tests conducted. It is one of the important parameters to gauge the spread of the infection in a specific region. The country which crossed a million cases on Friday (July 17) has tested approximately 12 million samples so far, keeping its TPR at 6.78 per cent. The same in June was 11.4 per cent.
Maharashtra has reported the highest TPR at 19.6 per cent as on July 17 with the maximum caseload of 2.84 lakh cases. Telangana which had fewer cases in the first three months started reporting a higher number of cases since June. The positivity rate for the state stands at 18.42 per cent followed by Delhi at 15.68.
Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra have done the highest number of tests among all the states. Their testing count stands at 17.82 lakh and 14.50 lakh respectively. Delhi has conducted 7.56 lakh cases so far. Most of the states with higher TPR have a higher number of tests while Telangana that has conducted only 2.22 lakh cases has reported much high TPR of 18.42 per cent.
Along with these states, Gujarat (9.11 per cent), Tamil Nadu (8.77 per cent) and Ladakh (7.25 per cent) recorded higher TPR than the national average. These states have caseloads of 1.56 lakh and 45,481 respectively. Ladakh has reported 1,147 cases as on July 17.
West Bengal was also alleged to have conducted a lesser number of tests in the beginning, but later increased its testing. As on date, the state has tested 6.63 lakh samples while its TPR stands at 5.45 per cent.
Karnataka which is seeing a huge surge in a number of positive cases in the last two weeks has reported 5.56 per cent TPR. The state has tested 9.25 lakh samples.
A total of 12 states have TPR higher than five per cent. Apart from the above-mentioned states, Chandigarh, Bihar, Puducherry, and Haryana have TPR above 5 per cent.