Nagpur: Though the collection centres have been asked to record exact addresses with even the nearest landmark before swab collection, the Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) has found that over 2,000 positive patients tested at 41 private and public labs in the last 10 days haven’t disclosed their correct details. The NMC issued the list and asked these labs to rectify the oversight.
However, health officials and private lab owners feel this has been deliberately done in a bid to under report positive cases and prevent action by the civic administration.
NMC, in its letter dated April 16, reiterated that lack of proper address makes it difficult to trace close contacts or take containment measures in areas reporting a large number of cases.
TOI spoke to a couple of labs to find out the reasons behind patients mentioning incomplete addresses. Lab officials admitted that in some cases they were at fault but blamed the NMC’s containment staff for apathy.
“Strangely, the NMC pointed out that a woman was untraceable in Manish Nagar but her husband had been traced and close contact ascertained,” said a lab director.
Another lab director said the heavy rush makes it difficult to go through every form carefully. “We assume patients are giving complete details. But at the time of data entry it is noticed that they just mentioned ‘Nagpur Maharashtra’. This is done to avoid the NMC health team from reaching their doorstep,” the director said.
As per the NMC list, one of the first private Covid labs of the city had most names with incomplete address. “Patients are approaching private labs with requests for not reporting their Covid positive status to the NMC. Since it’s a pandemic, it can’t be done. So they mention the wrong address to avoid their building or home being declared a mini or micro containment zone,” said a microbiologist
Another lab director said people are still fearful of the stigma and NMC action. “They don’t want to stay indoors and neither do they want to curtail their movement outside. So they prefer to keep their Covid positive status confidential,” he said.
The microbiologist said some labs were accepting more samples than their capacity which was also the reason of incomplete details.
In some genuine errors, it was found that the lab staff relied on the Aadhaar card which had the old address whereas the patient shifted to another residence. In another case, a lab found that the patient was already admitted to a private hospital when the NMC team went for contact tracing.