Lucknow, Aug 20 (IANS): Uttar Pradesh has become the first state in the country to carry out more than seven crore Covid tests.

A government spokesperson said that, "The testing protocol by the World Health Organisation for Uttar Pradesh is 32,000 tests per day, whereas Covid testing in the state has averaged 2.5 lakh tests a day for the past few weeks."

Meanwhile, Uttar Pradesh reported 29 new Covid positive cases and 35 recoveries on Thursday, bringing the total number of active cases in the state down to 407.

Cases were reported from just 16 districts, with Lucknow reporting the highest number of new cases at five. Banda and Bulandshahr also reported one death each.

"The reason UP is able to keep the infection under control is the aggressive testing," the spokesman said.

On Thursday, the state carried out more than 2.36 lakh tests.

Except for a few days in between, Uttar Pradesh has been averaging 2.3-2.5 lakh tests a day. On the scale of testing samples per positive case, the state is doing 39.9 tests per positive case," he said.

He further added that 70 per cent of tests conducted since the surge of the second wave of Covid-19 were in the rural regions.

"More than 73,000 surveillance committees constituted by the Yogi Adityanath government are moving across 97,941 villages in all 75 districts for this activity, which began on May 5. We are targeting 100 per cent coverage of rural households," he said.