Bengaluru, May 16 (IANS): As part of testing as many as 10,000 people a day for Covid-19 by the end of May, one more lab had been added in Karnataka's Chikkaballapura district, Medical Education Minister K. Sudhakar said, here on Saturday.

"I inaugurated the Chikkaballapura district's first Covid testing laboratory at the district hospital," tweeted Sudhakar.

According to Sudhakar, there has been the highest number of Covid-19 tests in the Chikkaballapura district without any lab. "Despite not having a lab, the Chikkaballapura district conducted one of the highest (number of) tests in the state," he said.

Lying in the orange zone, the district has seen 24 cases till Friday. Of this, six were active, 16 discharged and two deaths. Chikkaballapura is 61 km south of the city.

With 28 testing labs, Karnataka is averaging less than 5,000 tests a day. The government wants to raise the number of labs to 60 to test 10,000 samples daily.

The state government has decided to set up reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) labs in all private and ESIC medical colleges.