Many people in the district have complained that they are having to wait for four-five days to get the results after giving their samples for the COVD test.
During a factcheck by The Hindu based on complaints from people, it came to light that there was a shortage of digital entry operators at the GGH Out Patient COVID-triage centre in the city. The Government General Hospital at Anantapur runs a 24X7 sample collection centre with 500 to 800 persons giving their samples every day.
‘Backlog’
A couple of persons, who had given their samples on April 15(Thursday), had come on Tuesday to the GGH asking for the result as they had not received any SMS either of their sample getting accepted or the result. The data entry operators said only one person was working per shift and that there was a backlog.
“My worry is I had a journey scheduled for Tuesday and did not get my result or certificate even after two days of giving the sample,” said V.K. Rinas, who was supposed to go to Kerala for Ramzan. Kerala government is insisting on getting a COVID-negative certificate for entry into the State. There were at least half a dozen people arguing with the staff at the counter demanding their test results.
When asked, District Medical and Health Officer Y. Kameswara Prasad said that all the Urban Health Centres in Anantapur and PHCs in the rural areas were collecting COVID samples and entering data there itself.
Hospital Superintendent K.S.S. Venkateswara Rao told The Hindu that it had now allocated 15 staff members for the data entry and got the entire backlog cleared. It may be noted that the district has a capacity to test 6,000 samples a day, but less than 4,000 samples were collected from all over the district during the past 20 days in April. In March, less than 3,000 samples were collected.
