Testing crunch in Noida sees patients lining up at hospitals

Noida residents have been scrambling to get tested for Covid-19 as home tests have been difficult to book over the last few days. Most residents have had no option but to visit hospitals and labs to get their tests conducted.

Many complained that they could not get in touch with labs or that their appointments kept getting cancelled.

Noida resident Amit Gupta said one of his family members is Covid positive and he wanted to get a re-test done. Gupta said he tried Max Labs but could not book an appointment. “Home collection has been a problem lately. It takes one-two days to book an appointment and then two days for the results.” He eventually went to Kailash hospital, which has been conducting over 1,000 tests in a day.

A few residents said they have tried to reach out to Lal Path Labs, which has not been conducting tests for the last 10 days. A representative of the lab said, “As of now, we are not conducting tests in Noida. We needed to renew our approval to conduct tests since it had expired. It has been renewed yesterday and home testing will restart next week.”

On Saturday afternoon, government and private hospitals saw long lines of patients waiting to get tested. A Noida resident, who did not want to be named, said, “A few of my friends and relatives have been trying to get tested. One of them said their appointment was cancelled at the last minute by the lab. The lab said they do not have executives available or that they are not allowed to conduct home tests… It is dangerous since Covid positive patients are forced to step out for tests.”

The CMO did not respond to calls or texts on queries regarding testing. The Information Department of Gautam Budh Nagar tweeted on Saturday saying both government and private labs are testing in the district. Government labs include GIMS, SSPGTI and NIB whereas private labs include Shaarda, Jaypee, 360, SRL, Redcliffe, PathLine and Newberg. The tweet further read, “Dist Hospital and all CHC PHC doing testing. We will instruct them again to increase capacity.”

A district official said, “We are aware that testing has been a problem lately. Many of our government lab technicians have tested positive in the last few days. So we are trying to link more technicians to government centres so the issue can be resolved.”