Collect community samples, get ₹100: Govt to its teams

nNEWDELHI: To incentivise collecting samples from Covid-19 clusters for community testing, the Delhi government has decided to pay each team involved ₹100 per sample. This sum would be divided among members of the team with a highest share going to persons actually engaged in collecting the swab.

The incentive will retrospectively be payable from April 12, when the teams started collecting samples from hot spots in the citystate. Till Friday, April 17, 2,983 samples had been collected.

“The incentive, per team, would be worked out in such a way that the person exposed to maximum danger will be given the greater share of the incentive. For example, if there are eight members in a team with two persons taking the samples then the total amount (number of samples x ₹100) would be divided by 10 (to create 10 parts of the sum) and the two sample collectors would receive two parts each,” according to an officer order by Delhi’s health department.

Earlier this week, the government decided to start testing people in containment zones to understand the spread of the virus. In the absence of rapid testing kits at the time of taking this decision, the government decided to go ahead and conduct 20,000 RT-PCR tests in these areas.

Not only is the test more expensive, it also puts healthcare workers at a higher risk.

“For an RT-PCR test, the healthcare workers have to take a swab sample from the back of the throat. When that is done the patients tend to cough releasing aerosols that might contain the virus and infect the healthcare worker. The healthcare workers have to be in complete protective gear. It is much more difficult that simply taking the blood for an antibody test,” said another official.