Delhi bars labs ‘flouting’ rules, test capacity dips

NEWDELHI:A crisis of rules, procedures and performance of testing centres has put the government, labs and hospitals in Delhi on a collision course and led to a substantial setback to the national capital’s capacity to diagnose patients and check the spread of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) The crisis came to a peak on Thursday when eight labs were banned from carrying out tests after the government pulled them up for not following protocols, and, according to the health minister, taking too long to report results.

“Some labs were giving reports very late.If someone has taken a test for the coronavirus, the reports should be ready in 24 hours. At times, some have not given results for 5-6 days. This leads to a delay in hospitalisations because the special corona facilities say they will accept only patients who have a positive test. Other hospitals refuse to admit unless someone is confirmed to be corona-free,” health minister Satyender Jain told reporters.

The government also believes that the labs, by testing asymptomatic and low-risk individuals in violation of the testing guidelines, are effectively creating a bottleneck where people who desperately need to be tested have to wait. The counter argument is that testing of asymptomatic lowrisk individuals was not resulting in any reduction in overall positivity rates (proportion of positives to tests) in the state, setting alarm bells ringing about the magnitude of the problem.

In all, eight laboratories are now under investigation for not adhering to the protocols defined by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) before allowing people to take Covid-19 tests. A show-cause notice sent to them said: “...data submitted by you in the ICMR portal and to the health and family welfare department in which it has been observed that a large number of asymptomatic patients were tested without following ICMR testing protocol.”

The eight labs together were able to carry out 4,000 tests a day, according to figures they shared with HT. The government initiated a similar enquiry over discrepancy in data against another laboratory, Dr Lal Path Labs, in early May. The largest chain of private laboratories in India, Lal Path Labs alone had the capacity to test 4,000 samples. According to officials who asked not to be named, the lab is yet to be allowed to resume tests.

The controversy around testing comes at a time when the national capital has been recording an increasing number of new cases. On Wednesday, the city crossed the 1,500 mark for singleday infections. On Thursday, this number was 1,359.