Sadhna Sharma, 50, was running high fever with cough and cold for the last one week. On Saturday, she decided to get a Covid-19 test. After making calls to three major private laboratories in Delhi for home testing, she got to know that she would have to wait for at least three days.
“I did not want to go to a laboratory for the test, fearing that if I am infected I may end up spreading it to others. But all three laboratories said that the home collection facility was not available and there was prolonged waiting,” she said. Left with no option, she went to a lab to get herself tested.
With Covid-19 cases spiralling in the capital, complaints about testing related issues, too, are on the rise. Manish Chawla, a resident of Delhi, said a private lab told him that home collection of samples had been stopped. “They said I could come to the lab and get tested but the results would take three days. They insisted that I should get an antigen test done rather than RT-PCR if I wanted timely results,” he said.
Playing down these complaints, private labs said there might have been a dip in tests and sample collections during the Diwali weekend but things will soon get back to normal. “We have a certain capacity and home collection may take a day’s time. The drop in the number of tests that we saw was temporary and we don’t see any area of concern now,” a spokesperson of Dr Lal PathLabs said.
Another private service provider Max Labs said it was able to manage home collection within 24 hours. It, however, said number of tests fell to 820 on November 14 from 1,403 on November 11.
