Hyderabad: Lukewarm response to Covid test drive in GHMC limits

Hyderabad: The decision of the Telangana Health department to ramp up Covid-19 testing is receiving lukewarm response as people are not showing up for giving samples for testing as desired. It was decided to conduct 50,000 tests in five districts, including the three districts that come under GHMC limits.

At least 5,000 tests have to be done per day by the government to meet the 50,000 tests target in ten days' time. On June 16, they conducted 1,251 tests and June 17, 1,069 tests and tests done on June 18 were not released. Just over a thousand tests per day will mean the department has to spend at least a month's time to meet the target.

The Health department has set up nearly 20 sample collection centres in GHMC limits, including district hospital, area hospital, community health centres and urban health centres in the three districts. While 100 to 300 sample tests were given at these centres, the samples collected per day are on an average of 60 to 100.

The local Health authorities are reaching out to asymptomatic contacts of earlier infected cases from their areas and asking them to come over for testing but not many are showing inclination to undergo tests.

"Due to reasons unknown people are not turning up for tests at most of the centres. All this while, there was big furore over low testing. But when testing has begun people are not showing keenness to get tested," an official said.

When primary contacts are being told to come they are stating that they don't have any fever, cold or cough symptoms and hence they can't come for testing. Also, the fact that testing would be done for only symptomatic persons and not asymptomatic persons is one of the reasons for low footfall being seen at present. Some samples that are being collected in these test centres are of frontline staff from GHMC and Health wings from the respective areas. 

Positive cases on the rise

The Health department's decision to hold a 10-day test drive is seeing a jump in the number of infections for the last three days. On the first day (Monday) of testing, 213 tested positive out of 1,251 samples, on the second day, 267 persons tested positive out of 1,069 samples and on the third day, 352 samples tested positive. The department did not disclose the number of tests done on that day.