Telangana health minister faults private labs for high positivity rate

New Delhi: Telangana health minister Eatala Rajender has blamed the state’s high Covid-19 positivity rate on data entry errors by private laboratories and diagnostic centres.

Rajender told ET the private laboratories are only entering positive test results. “This has led to a sudden increase in positivity rate. They (private labs) have not entered the negative results in ICMR and state portals (for updating testing data). As per our estimates, there are 20,000 negative results which have still not been updated on the portal.
We are trying to get this rectified.”


Telangana’s 'high positivity-low tests' scenario has been a cause of concern for the ministry of health and family welfare. Between June 29 and July 5, Telangana recorded India’s highest test positivity rate at almost 28%. The cumulative test positivity rate was also at an all-time high of 20.6%. Maharashtra came close at almost 22% weekly test positivity and 18.8% cumulative positivity rates.

Rajender also blamed the private laboratories for not following testing protocols laid down by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR). “Our government laboratories are following the ICMR protocols by testing symptomatic persons. But these private labs are testing each and every person, even those who are asymptomatic,” he said.

Telangana is now planning to depute one person at every private diagnostic laboratory to ensure proper data entry in state and ICMR portals. “Private labs have not understood how sensitive this data is. They are entering the wrong tally. We need to rectify it and educate them,” said Rajender.