Hyderabad: Fear of infection driving people make beeline at Covid test centres

Hyderabad: Astonishingly at times when the government should have sharpened their tools to fight the battle against the ongoing second strain of Covid-19, several Urban Primary Health Centres (UPHC) are sending away people without testing due to shortage of Rapid Antigen kits.

These UPHCs in the city are urging people to visit private or other centres, or to turn up after a few days for testing. Another display of crumbled health infrastructure is these centres lack staff. On one hand the number of people seeking tests is spiraling and on the other hand the number of tests per day is remaining static and the pile-up pending tests is increasing by the day.

"I am so worried about my family members, we are a joint family having around 12 persons in one house. I have been visiting the testing centre in Kukatpally for two consecutive days but could not get tested due to the heavy crowd. With high fever and cold, I was unable to wait that long under the hot sun," said Srikanth Vasu, a patient.

While all the Primary Health Centres and Urban Primary Health Centres of the city are equipped with the Rapid Antigen testing facility, it has been observed that there is a shortage of kits in most of the centres.

"Earlier, the centre was issuing tokens in the morning and testing was being started in the afternoon, now queues for collecting tokens is so long that by seeing it we fear that it could be a source of spreading the virus since there is social distancing being maintained. I see people sneeze and cough while waiting for their turn," said another patient, Mohammed Iqbal, who visited Bandlaguda UPHC for testing. He did not have any symptoms so he was asked to come the next day.

Plus, several PHCs including Banjara Hills, Golnaka, Nehru Nagar, Bandlaguda and Kukatpally are facing the crunch of staff and running out of kits and the existing staff complain that they are using PPE kits for three to four days as there is no regular allotment of PPE kits.

However, the Telangana Health authorities are only focusing on testing all symptomatic cases on top priority and thoroughly checking secondary contacts for any symptoms, before conducting the tests.

According to Health officials, 51,000 Rapid Antigen tests are being conducted per day in all the districts. In Hyderabad, only 8,500 tests are being conducted per day.

A visit to several testing facilities shows that in each centre around 250 to 300 people are visiting daily for getting tested, but each PHC has been given a limit to conduct only 100 daily tests.

Moreover, once tested for Covid-19, after completing the isolation period many asymptomatic patients are coming back for confirmation, but they are asked to visit a private testing facility or come after a few days.