BENGALURU: When Bengalurean Sajai M received a message stating he had tested negative for Covid-19 on his phone at 3.55pm on July 24, he was bewildered since he had not taken the test. Bewilderment turned to consternation since the patient’s name in the message was not his.
To Sajai’s chagrin, he received 15 more such messages over the next 100 minutes. All stated he was negative but showed different names. Curiously, all the messages had come to his fancy number ending in 0000, which he had not made public.
The 39-year-old is now reconciled to the whole thing being a technical glitch. “Looks like someone is misusing RT-PCR tests. This must be probed,” said Sajai. He did take the Covid test in April, prior to a business trip but had registered through another number.
The 16 names included women and were across age groups. Sajai took to Twitter and tagged the BBMP to draw the Palike’s attention.
When TOI reached out to BBMP on Monday, it was found out that at least one each of the SRF IDs were generated in Mysuru and Hubballi. Two SRF IDs belonged to Bengaluru, said Randeep D, special commissioner, Health, BBMP.
“In these two cases, the phone numbers swab collectors gave while testing was different. Only the first digits were common. We do not know the actual number which received these messages,” said Randeep.
He said a request has been made to the War Room to verify the remaining messages and also why results pertaining to two SRF IDs from Bengaluru were sent to a wrong number.
However, sources said mobile numbers ending in certain sequences like 0000 are known to get such messages. “This needs to be addressed by the state War Room,” officials said.
