Bhubaneswar: The state government’s claims to provide Covid-19 test reports online through a Covid dashboard seems to be more on paper than on the ground, escalating the woes of coronavirus-infected patients and their families.
Several persons who gave their samples to the government testing labs for RT-PCR tests in Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) and Cuttack Municipal Corporation (CMC) areas are yet to receive their test reports on the website. When they contacted the civic authorities, they were told to personally visit the Capital Hospital in Bhubaneswar to get the physical copy of their reports.
“I gave my sample on May 29 and received a call from the BMC May 31 saying that some of my family members had tested Covid positive. But we did not get the report online even after eight days after the phone call. When I asked for a report, the BMC told me to visit Capital Hospital to get a physical copy of the report,” said Dipesh Patel told Orissa POST.
He even posted the matter on Twitter and approached the BMC and other officials with his SRF ID and other details but no one responded. Similar is the fate of people of CMC area in Cuttack. A resident of Cuttack who submitted his sample on May 21 did not receive the report even after 10 days.
According to several aggrieved citizens who have faced such problems, in many cases, the government labs and civic bodies inform the Covid positive patients about the result of their tests over phone but do not provide them with a physical copy.
People who test Covid negative suffer the most as in many cases they receive the result via SMS more than a couple of weeks later. Many of them even do not receive their reports online. Thus, such apathy of the authorities forces many to look for private players for fast testing and reports.
This reporter verified the claims of the aggrieved a few people with their SRF IDs on the system, but didn’t find their report online.
When contacted, IT Secretary Manoj Mishra said, “To my knowledge, this is not true as I too get a lot of feedback. Data comes from all private and government setups and they get uploaded as they come.”
Health department secretary PK Mohapatra also said that all is well and the system is in place and people can access their reports online.
PNN