At a crucial time such as this, when hospitals are overburdened, medical options are limited, and anxiety is at an all-time high, the worst thing that can happen is a goof-up. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what happened in Noida recently.
35 people were admitted to a COVID-19 ward for 3 days after being wrongly diagnosed as positive by private labs. They shared a space with actual coronavirus patients despite not having it themselves.
This obviously put that at a much higher risk, and for no fault of theirs. According to NDTV, these 35 people had consulted private doctors for mild fever, cough, and cold. After the private lab results came in as Covid-19 positive, they were admitted to government isolation facilities where their samples were taken again and sent to the National Institute of Virology.
However, their results from the National Institute of Virology showed them being Covid-19 negative. An FIR has been launched against one of the labs. An investigation by the Noida Health Department found lapses in sample collection by private lab employees.
Allegedly, they did not maintain the samples at optimum temperature, leading to inaccurate results.While the 35 patients were subsequently discharged, they have been kept under observation due to their three-day exposure to other patients in the isolation ward.
The private labs in question were not approved by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) for conducting Covid-19 tests in the first place, and action is expected to be taken against all of them.