Taking serious note of the confusion that led to two “positive” persons testing negative after a re-test, the State Health and Family Welfare Department said it will initiate disciplinary action against those responsible.
The department confirmed that the repeat samples of all the three — two policemen and a pregnant woman — taken for a third confirmatory test were negative again. The reports from NIV, Bengaluru unit came on Thursday evening.
Bengaluru Urban District Health Officer (DHO) G. Srinivas told The Hindu that a notice will be issued to the private hospital in BTM Layout where the pregnant woman’s samples were collected and sent to a private lab.
“We will issue a notice to the hospital on Friday through the Bengaluru Urban Deputy Commissioner asking why the samples were sent to a private lab that is not ICMR approved in Karnataka. The lab’s Delhi centre is ICMR approved and in Karnataka it is only a collection centre,” he said.
“When there are so many government and ICMR-approved private labs in Bengaluru, why were the samples sent to a particular lab that is not even ICMR approved?” he said, adding that the department will now have to write to the Centre to remove the two cases from the total positive cases in Bengaluru.
S. Suresh Kumar, Primary and Secondary Education Minister, who is the COVID-19 spokesperson for Karnataka, said the pregnant woman and the policeman have been discharged from the COVID-19 ward in Victoria Hospital and have been isolated.
“The woman has gone to a nursing home of her choice and her family members, who also tested negative, are also in the same nursing home. Action will be initiated against those responsible for the confusion,” he said.
Attributing the confusion, with regard to the policeman’s sample testing, to entry of the same name twice in the ICMR Specimen Referral Form (SRF) filled in the hospital where the samples were collected, the Minister said: “It is an unfortunate thing that should not have happened. We are aware of the stress that the policeman would have undergone after he was informed about his positive result. As the policeman had visited Hanur in Chamarajnagar, the district administration has quarantined several of his contacts there”.
Replying to queries as to why the two were admitted in a COVID-19 ward when there was doubt about their reports and not in an institutional isolation facility, Health Commissioner Pankaj Kumar Pandey said: “In the woman’s report although the result was positive, the interpretation said inconclusive. As per norms, we cannot keep positive patients in an isolation facility.”
