Bengaluru, Aug 26 (IANS): Ramping up its overall lab capacity, Karnataka is conducting about 50,000 Covid-19 tests per day to contain the pandemic spread, the state's Medical Education Minister K. Sudhakar said on Wednesday.

"We have conducted 57,787 Covid-19 tests today (Wednesday) in 108 labs across the state, taking its total number to 25,13,555 so far," Sudhakar said here in a statement.

Noting that the recovery rate of Covid patients after treatment crossed 70 per cent, Sudhakar said the state's mortality rate stood at 1.69 per cent, while that of Bengaluru at 1.57 per cent.

"The state has steadily expanded the testing capacity by increasing the number of labs to 108 from 2 in March. In the last 5 days, we have conducted 3,23,753 tests, clocking more than 50,000 tests a day," reiterated Sudhakar.

Appreciating all doctors, nurses and paramedics for their relentless hard work, the minister said the situation in the state was improving, as evident from over 2-lakh discharges up to Tuesday since March 8.

"Of the total 2,91,826 positive cases from across the state till Tuesday, 82,410 are active, as 2,04,439 have been discharged till date, while 4,958 succumbed to the virus since March 8 when it entered the state," said Sudhakar.

The state health task force recently reduced the cost of RT-PCR (Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction) testing to Rs 1,500 from Rs 2,000 per test to increase the rate of testing per day in the state-run hospitals. In private hospitals too, the cost was reduced to Rs 2,500 from Rs 3,000 per test.

"We have also purchased about 20-lakh rapid antigen kits and 18 lakh RT-PCR kits to increase the testing capacity in the 108 state-run and private labs," added Sudhakar.