Jalandhar resident never got himself tested, but gets a +ve RT-PCR report

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, April 13

Alleging negligence on the part of medical teams, Harvinder Singh, a city-based resident, on Tuesday reported that he had received the RT-PCR report of an unidentified person on his mobile number. He did not even get his RT-PCR (Reverse Transcription Polymerace Chain Reaction) test done, the report he received was positive for Covid-19. Apart from delayed reports, many other serious lapses related to Covid testing have come to light in the past few weeks.

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On the one hand, the gross negligence is being reported but on the other the administration is taking the credit for conducting rampant Covid testing (2,501 tests per million population) on a daily basis.

“Prior to receiving the Covid report, I also obtained a text with the state government’s logo that your (Baljit Singh) sample for the RT-PCR test was taken on April 9, for which the SRF Id is 0302700575967. Subsequently, on Monday evening, I got another text with the same logo that your (Baljit Singh) sample has tested positive for the virus and you are advised to isolate yourself. Teams of the Health Department will contact you shortly,” stated Harvinder, who also shared the screenshots of both the messages.

Likewise, Navdeep Kumar Sharma, another resident of the city, said last week his wife received a similar message. “While my wife and I got our RT-PCR tests done at a joint naka (checkpost) by the police and health officials, my wife received the reports and test confirmation messages of an unidentified person.

While she had developed no symptoms of the coronavirus, the test report came back positive,” added Navdeep. At the Civil Hospital, when I enquired about the issue, an official confirmed that people were complaining them about cross delivery of the messages. “As the testing laboratories are getting several samples in a day and testing is being conducted rampantly, we are receiving complaints of wrong reports,” said the official.

5 deaths, 391 new cases in district

• The district on Tuesday reported five casualties due to Covid, pushing the death toll to 994. Besides, 391 new infections were also witnessed taking the Covid case tally to 37,751. While there are 3,109 active cases in the district, test reports of as many as 3,230 persons are still awaited
• On Tuesday, the infections were reported from the areas like Basti Sheikh, Rama Mandi, JP Nagar, Wadala Chowk, Basti Bawa Khel, Basti Gujan, Bhagat Singh Colony, Defense colony, Golden Avenue among others

Website for Covid bed info: https://jalandhar.nic.in/