A 54-year-old health worker from East Midnapore’s Tamluk died in an isolation facility at the district hospital here on Monday morning after being refused a rapid antigen test for Covid-19 on Sunday night, her son alleged on Tuesday.

The son said pleas for rapid antigen test on Sunday night were in vain, as hospital authorities said it was not done between 6pm and 6am.

The woman, a supervisor at the Nandakumar health centre, was rushed to the hospital around 9pm on Sunday when she complained of acute breathlessness. She died around 5am on Monday.

“A doctor from afar prescribed medicines, after which I was asked to take my mother to the isolation ward outside the main hospital building. My mother’s oxygen kept plunging, and I pleaded with the nurse to call a doctor or to arrange for a ventilator. She said nothing could be done without a test,” he added.

The woman tested negative for Covid over a week ago during a health check-up for frontline Covid warriors.

On Sunday, hospital authorities refused to consider the Covid negative report and advised a fresh test, but no rapid antigen test could be done between 6pm and 6am, the son said. He said her body was handed over without any test and the family did not know what happened to her.

Chief medical officer Nitai Mondal said the woman died of “hypertension-related cardiac failure, not Covid”.

Tamluk district hospital superintendent Gopal Das said they were following a directive from Mondal that advised against rapid antigen testing at night.

“The directive had cited concerns regarding moving positive patients to Covid hospitals at night, so in order to remove that logistic hurdle that directive had been issued,” said Das.

Mondal, however, denied issuing any such directive, saying “all hospitals can conduct rapid antigen tests at their own discretion, weighing the seriousness of the situation.”