Why getting a Covid-19 test done still isn’t easy

Ghaziabad/Noida: Bhola Nath (60), a resident of Khoda, has had fever for the past 15 days. On Tuesday, his daughter took him to MMG District Hospital to see a doctor. He was advised a test for Covid-19 and asked to go to IMS Engineering College in Dasna, where the government’s testing booth is located.
Nath took an auto and reached the booth around 1.30pm but found it shut. “I am not able to stand properly. The doctor should have told me the booth is not functional on Tuesday. I will once again have to travel 20km to come here,” he said.
The doctor at MMG wouldn’t have known. The testing centre at Dasna suffered damage during a sanitisation routine on Tuesday. Officials said it would start collecting samples from Wednesday again.
But the disruption showed why depending on just one testing booth in a large district like Ghaziabad is precarious. The sample collection booth is manned by one technician and is functional for four hours, from 11.30am to 3.30pm. Others like Nath, many of them patients who need surgery, had travelled long distances for the test. They said without the Covid report, hospitals refused to admit them.
Puneet Varshney, a resident of Chhapraula, was so furious that he dialled the police control room to lodge a complaint. “I am going to complain about this on the CM’s grievance portal. This is ridiculous. There is just one centre for Ghaziabad, which also does not work properly. Private hospitals do not admit a patient without Covid test But no one is there to look into these issues,” Varshney said.
Mamta Rani, who had come all the way from Modinagar and will go into an operation theatre soon for a uterus procedure, also had to return. “The pain is unbearable, but I cannot undergo surgery without the test report,” she said.
The testing apparatus in Ghaziabad continues to be fragile, three months into the pandemic, when the central government is setting higher targets for tests. Even among private players, only one is currently allowed to collect samples – the lab at Yashoda Hospital in Kaushambi. Other labs, including Lal Pathlabs, Pathkind and SRL, have been banned by the health department for alleged violation of Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) guidelines.
Alok Kumar, founder of the Federation of Association of Apartment Owners (FedAOA), said as a result, most Ghaziabad residents have little choice other than going to Delhi for Covid tests. For a test in Ghaziabad, an individual will have to either visit a private hospital’s emergency or fever clinic, or a government hospital to get a prescription. After that, only the Dasna booth or the Yashoda lab will collect samples.
On an average, the health department in Ghaziabad is currently testing 240 samples every day. Around 200 of those are routed via the government mechanism. Testing in emergency cases is done at MMG with the help of a Truenat machine. The machine also caters to the District Women Hospital on the adjoining campus.
Chief medical officer Dr NK Gupta said all but one private lab had been stopped from testing for not following procedure as well as violating biomedical waste management rules and Central Pollution Control Board norms while disposing of personal protective gear. The CMO said he had received the replies from labs and the bean would be reviewed.
Some hurdles go in Noida
Testing was a concern in Noida as well till last week as many complained about procedural hurdles. Several private labs were also refusing tests after they were pulled up for false positive reports. “We had a hard time reaching the government lab last week for a test. The helpline was busy. We tried going to a private lab in our area but they said they have halted Covid tests temporarily. We finally went to GIMS (Covid hospital) to check how the test could be done and the sample was taken there,” said a resident of Sector 76.
Noida has, however, increased sampling centres over the past five days. Samples were being collected earlier only at GIMS and Child PGI, the other Covid hospital, a mobile van and private facilities such as Sharda, which is now a Covid hospital as well. Now, there are nine centres. “A total of about 600 samples are being collected every day in the district in the past few days. Around 250 samples are collected by the government centres daily and about 300 samples are taken by private labs,” said Dr Nepal Singh, nodal officer for sampling.
Address a hurdle?
Those from other districts, however, have been facing problems getting Covid tests done in Noida. There have been several instances of people with Delhi, Ghaziabad and Meerut addresses being turned away by labs. A patient in his mid-40s waited at a private hospital in Sector 62 for over three hours but wasn’t tested because he lives in Indirapuram, which is just across the highway but in Ghaziabad. “The hospital said I would have to go to a hospital in Ghaziabad. I went to Max Vaishali and was tested here,” said Ravi Gupta.
Officials of some private hospitals said they had been asked to “avoid” taking in patients for testing or admission from other districts. An official said if a patient is from another district, it would involve shifting the patient to isolation for treatment if the report is positive. It would also trigger a contact-tracing exercise spanning multiple districts and cross-notify the patient’s home district for updation of numbers. The process, if a patient is not a resident of Noida, the officils explained, is cumbersome.
The Noida administration said no such order had been issued. “No order has been passed prohibiting Covid tests of persons belonging to other states or districts. Rumours in this regard are strongly condemned. We shall continue to test all suspected persons, according to ICMR protocol,” said CMO Deepak Ohri.
District magistrate Suhas LY told TOI, “We are trying our best to test and treat everyone who comes in. It is not a regular blood test but pandemic management. We have the highest number of cross-notified patients from other districts, which shows we are testing and treating everyone.”