PremiumMumbaikers will have to share their Aadhaar card details with chemists to buy covid self-test kits, mayor Kishori Pednekar said, a day after the city’s local authorities made it mandatory for buyers to share test results with them and also upload the same on the ICMR’s website
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Mumbaikers will have to share their Aadhaar card details with chemists to buy covid self-test kits, mayor Kishori Pednekar said on Saturday, a day after the city’s local authorities made it mandatory for buyers to share test results with them and also upload the same on the Indian Council of Medical Research’s website, regardless of the outcome. Kit sellers were asked to keep on record addresses and phone numbers. Ward staff will scan those reports and may visit residences for spot assessments.
India has seen cases spike to a seven-day rolling average of nearly 230,000 from under 20,000 within the span of a fortnight, pushing administrations into rule-heavy mode in various parts of the country. But Mumbai’s move, while aimed at strengthening surveillance, is both intrusive of privacy and needlessly burdensome. Globally, testing strategies are being reassessed in the context of Omicron’s lower health risk and service capacities crunched by strict quarantine norms. We should indeed capture cases as accurately as possible, but not at the cost of people in need going untested, which Mumbai’s new rules could result in. It would be better for Mumbai to abandon coercion and use nudges.
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