With abysmal Covid-19 testing numbers, the situation in Telangana is worsening as the state’s Covid positive rate becomes highest in India at 25%. For every 100 tests, 25 people are found positive in the state, followed by Maharashtra (22%), Delhi (16%) and Tamil and Gujarat (11%). The Telangana government, however, has accused private labs for this situation and said that they didn’t follow the guidelines issued by ICMR resulting in a spike in cases.
After repeated orders from the High Court, Telangana conducted only 1.10 lakh tests while the neighbouring Andhra Pradesh carried one million tests. As of last week, Telangana is testing only in thousands. Instead of raking up its efforts against the situation, the Telangana government put the onus on private labs and accused them of not adhering to testing norms prescribed by Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) leading to false positive results.
State director of public health, Srinivas Rao said, “We have issued notices to 13 private labs which are not following the norms. One of these private laboratories has reported an extremely high sample positivity rate. With 2,672 positive cases against 3,726 of total samples tested, the positivity rate is 71.7 per cent—a gross variation and discrepancy in the notified positivity rate of Covid-19 till date.”
Also, it was noticed that most of the private labs don’t have the proper training to conduct Covid tests. When The Daily Guardian contacted a doctor in Gandhi Hospital, he said, “In Telangana, only symptomatic and critical patients are tested and only limited tests happen so most of the samples are tested positive. Government noticed that in some private labs most of the test results became positive. Maybe there is no proper training for them.”
On the other hand, in Andhra Pradesh, 10,17,140 Covid-19 samples were tested till Sunday. It is the first state to conduct coronavirus tests on such a massive scale. Andhra’s ruling party MP and parliamentary party chief Vijay Sai Reddy told The Daily Guardian, “Chief Minister Jagan sir’s efforts in healthcare are lauded across the nation. The government is testing samples on a large scale that’s why even opposition leaders are praising Jaganmohan Reddy.”
However, despite these tall claims, cases are rising in Andhra too. About 961 people were tested positive on Sunday — highest single-day number in the state so far.