The Central teams deputed by the Union Health Ministry to look for the cause of the sudden spurt of Covid-19 cases in Kerala and Maharashtra as well as assist state authorities to deal with it, have found that both states had substantially reduced the number of RT-PCR tests they conducted, officials said on Tuesday.

Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan said that the teams found multiple lacunae which led to a rise of daily infections in both Kerala and Maharashtra. "However,one common thing was that over a period of time, the percentage of RT-PCR tests in Maharashtra as well as Kerala have gone down significantly. There is a need to substantially increase the testing numbers through RT-PCR in both the states," he added.