Chandigarh, May 13 (IANS) Punjab on Wednesday completed testing of 41,849 people. With this, the state has increased its testing per million to 1,392 per day against the national average of 1,243, Health and Family Welfare Minister Balbir Singh Sidhu said.

The state has followed an effective approach towards testing.

He said Punjab has rapidly ramped up its testing rate by increasing its lab capacities. The state had tested 20,000 samples by May 2. Moving forward, the state did the next set of 10,000 tests in just five days, crossing the mark of 30,000 tests by May 7.

The state is using its government medical college labs to their full potential to test the Covid-19 suspected cases. Besides, the government of India institutions like IMTECH and the PGI, both in Chandigarh, have been roped in for testing.

Some Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) approved private labs have been roped in by the Department of Health to increase the testing capacity.

The Health Minister said purchase orders for three MGI-SP960 automated high throughput RNA extraction system have been made by the Department of Medical Education and Research for three government medical colleges.

--IANS vg/prs