Greater Noida: Gautam Budh Nagar health department has scaled up Covid
testing across the district in the past 10 days, but the number of reports being processed every day has not gone up proportionally.
The department on Saturday claimed that over 6,000
Covid tests are being conducted at the government-run centres across the district. Officials from the department said that over 4,000 samples are being examined with the help of rapid antigen kits and an additional 2,000 to 2,500 samples are being detected through the RT-PCR method.
Notably, private laboratories are also conducting at least 1,500 tests every day.
“We are conducting an average of 6,200 to 6,500 tests through just state-run centres. However, due to increased testing, the processing of reports is taking a while. The backlog is being cleared,” said the chief medical officer of the district, Deepak Ohri.
Refuting the claims of the administration, some residents said that reality on the ground is worse. Mritunjay Kumar Singh (33), a resident of Royal Homes apartment in Salarpur, said that he had given his samples at the Sector 30-located government hospital on April 13. Singh had developed Covid-like symptoms but was asked to wait for 48 hours to get the test report.
“I keep checking the Covid report tracking portal every two hours. It shows my sample was forwarded to GIMS. I keep calling up the helpline number, the GIMS phone number, the integrated control room and the CMO office but nobody has responded yet,” said Singh, who had no clue about his report till 5pm on April 17.
“While over 6,000 samples are being collected, government labs can generate only about 2,000 samples at present. We are trying to augment the infrastructure,” added Ohri.