40% say there are not enough Covid-19 testing facilities in their district: survey

NEW DELHI: Nearly 40% people said that between government and private labs, there were not enough functional Covid-19 testing facilities in their district, according to a recent survey by community social media platform LocalCircles. Only 13% of the respondents said there were enough functional Covid-19 testing facilities in their district.
The survey aimed to understand the state of testing across the country received over 16,000 responses from 218 districts. When respondents were asked about the primary reason for the number of Covid-19 cases in the district being understated, almost 42% said it was because their district or state administration did not want to report a high number of cases, leading to the absence of proactive testing.
Another 16% said the district didn’t have enough labs, testing staff or testing kits. Meanwhile 19% said that it was because many people were not disclosing their results unless symptoms are severe. Around 13% said it could be because many people were not going out to get tested because most cases are asymptomatic.
LocalCircles also revealed that many citizens had reported that if they booked an appointment with a private lab to get a Covid test done, they were given an appointment for the test only on the third or the fourth day, wasting critical time. In addition, the platform also received several complaints about test results taking 48-72 hours.