The rapid rise in number of Covid cases has put sample collection and testing facilities under strain. The consequence: people are having to wait for several days to get tested and up to 48 hours for the results to come.
Several diagnostic centres in the city have witnessed four to five times rise in the number of tests being done compared to the number of tests done about ten days ago.
This apart, the human resources of the laboratories are also strained as sevral of them are down with Covid.
A Behala resident had not received her Covid test result even after 48 hours of sample collection. The woman’s swab samples were collected around 7.30pm on Tuesday. She was still awaiting the result at 8pm on Thursday.
Madhuri Katti, a resident of Lake Gardens, could get a phlebotomist on Wednesday to collect samples from home after trying for three days. She said that by time the results would come, she would probably be “out of the woods”. “I contacted four laboratories and all of them couldn’t send a person to collect sample. The fifth one finally agreed to send someone. Some of the labs I contacted asked me to come over with three to four hours time in hand because of the rush of patients,” she said.
A 42-year resident of Kamalgazi and his wife were promised home collection of swab samples at 2pm on Wednesday by a private hospital. The collection was done at 9pm, but he was not sure when the results would arrive.
Across Calcutta the scene is similar. Owners and officials of laboratories admitted they were strained because many of their staff are down with Covid.
Somnath Chatterjee, director, Suraksha Laboratories, told Metro that 20 per cent of their workforce has been infected with Covid. “Many of our phlebotomists are down with Covid. As a result those who are still around are working extra hours. We are collecting samples up to 10pm. Though the tests have not been affected, sample collection has been affected,” he said.
“We had tested 89 samples on December 26 and 3 of them tested positive. On Wednesday, we tested 600 samples and 400 of them were positive,” said Alok Roy, the chairman of Medica Superspecialty Hospitals. “Many of our staff have tested positive and we had to stop home collection for a day”.
An official of AMRI Hospitals said that they had limited home collection of samples. Elderly and bedridden people are being given priority, others are being requested to come to the hospital. “Several of our phlebotomists are down with Covid. We hope to restart home collection with full resources by the end of this week,” the official said.
The Calcutta Municipal Corporation too is finding it difficult to deal with the surge in test numbers. Seventeen RT-PCR sample collection centers are receiving about 1,000 samples everyday now compared to 200 samples they received daily a month ago.
“The results are taking between 24 and 36 hours to arrive,” said a CMC official.