‘Pakistan to increase COVID-19 testing capacity to 100,000 in July’

Pakistan will be increasing its testing capacity for COVID-19 in July said Federal Minister for Planning Asad Umar, reported Radio Pakistan on Wednesday.

The government aims to be able to conduct 100,000 tests per day next month. The current testing capacity of the country stands at 50,000 tests per day.

However, only 28,117 coronavirus tests were conducted over the past 24 hours, according to the government’s official COVID-19 portal. The highest number of tests the country has done so far is 29,850 tests on June 12.

The planning minister said the coronavirus challenge can be overcome if the testing capacity was increased and the public adopted the SOPs for prevention.

A complete lockdown was not viable for the country, Umar added. He said the daily wage workers would suffer greatly if there was complete lockdown.

Pakistan has reported 154,760 COVID-19 cases and 2,975 deaths. A total of 58,437 people have recovered from the disease.