There has been criticism from multiple quarters about the low COVID-19 testing rates in India. In the past few weeks, a significant improvement in the testing rate is achieved. How does this compare with other countries? Here is an analysis. A tweet from the BJP’s official Twitter handle ( @BJP4India), on 16 April 2020, states that the scale of COVID-19 testing being conducted in India at the benchmark of 5 thousand cases and 10 thousand cases is among the largest in the world, higher than that of UK, USA & Italy. India has tested 2,74,599 samples till 9 pm on 15 April. At the benchmarks of 5,000 and 10,000 cases, the number of tests were 114,015 and 217,554 respectively. This scale of testing at these stages is one of the largest, way more than tests conducted in US, UK and Italy. pic.twitter.com/LG01VFr7JU The infographic provided in the tweet contains the details of the number of tests conducted by India on the day the total number of COVID-19 positive cases crossed 5000 and 10000 mark respectively. Data pertaining to, USA, UK, Italy and Canada are also provided in the infographic for comparison. As per this information, India has conducted around 1.14 lakh tests by the time 5000 Covid-19 cases were identified. In comparison, the USA, UK and Italy conducted fewer tests when the first 5000 cases were reported. Meanwhile, Canada has conducted more than 2.41 lakh tests when 5000 cases were reported. It took around 2.17 lakh tests for India to identify 10 thousand cases, while the numbers for the USA, UK and Italy were significantly less as per the infographic shared by the BJP. Asit appears, the intent of the is to justify and rebut the allegation that Indiais not testing enough and hence the number of positive cases reported are fewerthan other countries. Inthis story, we take a look at this claim and compare the data with testingnumbers of some other countries. Aconsolidated official source for COVID-19 numbers for all the countries is notavailable. However, information from various countries has been aggregated atwebsites like Ourworldindata.org,who collate the information from various official sources. Thedata from this source does tally with the numbers mentioned in the infographictweeted by the BJP. The numbers also match with the official government sourcesof the respective countries mentioned in the tweet. Tests conducted by India among the highest at the 40 thousand cases mark India has recently crossed 40 thousand COVID-19 positive cases. As per the available data, India conducted nearly 10.5 lakh tests to reach this number. Testing information is not available for a few of the countries with a high number of cases like – Spain, Russia, Brazil, Iran etc. to compare the data. Amongthe countries for which the testing information is available, India hasconducted the highest number of tests to identify 40 thousand cases. It isfollowed by Germany, which has conducted around 9.6 lakh tests on the day itsnumber of positive cases have crossed 40 thousand. Canada, USA and Peru areamong the countries which conducted a greater number of tests to identify itsfirst 40 thousand cases. Meanwhile,France, U.K, Italy & Belgium have conducted the least number of tests toidentify 40 thousand cases. Among these countries, Germany has conducted moretests to identify its first 20 thousand cases, followed by India. South Korea and Canada have conducted more tests than India to detect 5 thousand and 10 thousand cases Fewcountries have fared well in controlling the spread of COVID-19. South Korea,New Zealand, Canada, Israel etc. are few such examples. One of the main reasons cited for this is theaggressive testing carried out by them. Sincemost of these countries have just over 10 thousand positive cases so far, wehave considered 5 thousand and 10 thousand cases as the benchmarks to comparethe number of tests conducted. India has conducted a greater number of tests to identify its first 5 thousand and 10 thousand cases than most of these countries as well. However, South Korea and Canada have conducted a greater number of tests compared to India. Canada required around 2.41 lakh tests to detect 5 thousand cases i.e. more than double the number of tests conducted by India at that benchmark. Meanwhile,when it comes to tests conducted to identify 10 thousand cases, South Korea isahead of the others by a significant margin with 4.43 lakh tests, compared to2.17 lakh tests in India. New Zealand is another country which did proactivetesting, that has limited the total number of cases as on 03 May to around1,100 cases for which 1.5 lakh tests were done.