New Delhi: Most of the private labs that had home-collecting feature for Corona virus have stopped their technicians to visit the houses. This has been the fall-out after Supreme Court had given notices to the government through Cabinet and Health Secretaries on a plea to cap the RT-PCR (Reverse Transcription–polymerase chain reaction) testing which had mounted to Rs 2400 per test which added to the woes of the middle class. The private labs that were earlier charging between Rs 2400 to Rs 3000 a test have now fallen in the cap of Rs 800.
A few weeks ago, the Home Ministry had given a dressing down to Delhi government for not enforcing strictness in precautions knowing well that festive seasons were coming and could throw the covid guidelines to the wind and it remained a silent witness to the upsurge and failed to contain the leap in the corona infection positive cases.
The private labs greed to earn more came up when their demand for extra Rs 400 was okayed if the home-collection was done. But as of now many of the private labs are refusing to collect the corona virus sample swabs from the homes.
A technician, who spoke under anonymity, said that the testing cases have gone down to 65000 a month from over 1.25 lakh. We are not testing much because most of the designated testing centres are at far off places. “A person in East Delhi will not be wanting to go to Vasant Vihar for his test at our centre,” he said and added that why should they take a risk for collecting the sample from home.
The Uttar Pradesh Government has capped the test at Rs 900 if the sample is collected from home otherwise the rates are Rs 700 per RT-PCR test. Madan Lal living in Ghaziabad was happy that the rates had come down to less than 50 per cent.
How come the Delhi government could not limit it to Rs 900 per test if sample collected from home. As it is, the capital is flooded with pollution control hoarding and bill boards in addition to over Rs 15 lakh being spent on volunteers belonging to civil defence and others to assist in combatting the pollution menace.
The money on self publicity by Delhi CM Kejriwal could have been better utilised in facilitating the city’s medical services.
