ANANTAPUR: In an unusual case, three of seven volunteers in Tadipatri who enrolled for COVID-19 testing but did not undergo tests, were informed that they were infected. Much to their surprise, the staff of a ward secretariat received messages on their phones, which said that while three of them had tested positive, the remaining were healthy. According to officials, health secretary of Tadipatri’s 16th ward secretariat Susheela was asked, last month, to enrol at least seven persons who wanted to get tested, and submit their phone and Aadhaar numbers. She complied and submitted details of the seven ward secretariat staff to the local community health centre.
On the assigned day (June 1), though the staff went to the scheduled location, no tests were performed on them. Susheela was reportedly told by officials concerned that the scheduled time for conducting the tests was over and that they cannot take anymore samples. The volunteers received the messages regarding their results five days later, on June 6.
One of the seven ward volunteers, Bhanu Teja, said he got a message stating that his test results came negative. “No official collected swab samples from us. We only gave our details to the health secretary,” he added. The health department clarified in a tweet that SMSes regarding results were sent to numbers given by people seeking to undergo COVID tests. “If they give a wrong number or someone else’s number, then the message will go to that number. The AP government has been sending test results by SMSes to reduce panic among people about their test results,’’ it said.
The response came after opposition leader N Chandrababu Naidu alleged that the YS Jagan Mohan Reddy government had been cheating not only people, but also the Centre regarding the COVID figures right from the beginning. “People who did not even give their samples have received SMSes declaring if they are positive or negative for the coronavirus. Shocked to learn that a government can stoop to such a level to cover its failures. ‘One Million COVID tests’ narrative woven by the AP government is either a sham or a scam. I request the Centre to look into this immediately and expose the criminal motive...’’ he tweeted.