Patients who tested positive for COVID-19 are being bombarded with calls from companies providing “home isolation packages” and from private hospitals asking them to get admitted. This, they allege, is because their personal data provided at the time of giving their swabs for tests has been leaked.
They alleged that the callers have all their details, including phone number, age, address, co-morbidities and their test result. The hospitals and other health care companies are even promising them discounts if they sign up for their COVID care packages “quickly”.
One of the patients who tested positive said that she received more than half a dozen calls two days after her RT-PCR test had revealed that she was COVID-19 positive. “I was asymptomatic and had already consulted a doctor who had told me all the medical protocols to be followed. Yet I got calls from several hospitals stating that I need to be admitted. The people on the phone had all my personal details and it was a violation of my privacy,” said the woman working in a private company in north Bengaluru.
A doctor who was providing home-based care for positive patients also complained that many of his patients had reported similar complaints. “The patients are already stressed and hospitals are using this situation to instil fear in them and force them to get admitted,” he said. He also said that this situation has also created an artificial deficiency of beds. “Patients who do not need to be hospitalised are occupying hospital beds and those in need of beds are running from pillar to post,” he added.
N. Manjunath Prasad, Commissioner, Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike, said that if any citizen face such issues, they can complain to the civic body. He said that he had received “vague” messages about such instances but they had no leads.
“We are sure that the data cannot be compromised from our end. If any data has been leaked, it is perhaps from labs that conduct these tests,” he said.
