HYDERABAD: Telangana may have increased testing to about a lakh people a day, however, the sheer number of people turning up to get tested has shown that the system is inadequate to handle the rush. On Saturday, several patients were turned away from Primary Health Centres (PHCs) as only a set number of tokens were issued by PHCs for conducting Rapid Antigen Tests. In some Centres, the tokens for the next day were also getting over.
“I had visited the Centre at Hafeezpet for a Rapid Antigen Test. Majority of the tokens for Saturday had already been issued on Friday, with only a handful left for Saturday, which also got over by 10.30 am,” said GSR Chaitanya, a resident of Madhapur who visited the Hafeezpet PHC. A similar scene is being witnessed daily at Fever Hospital, Nallakunta where every day, at least 200 people turn up for testing, leading to overcrowding and disregard for social distancing norms.
Several citizens have also pointed out how the limited working hours of collection centres has caused overcrowding and inconvenience. Meanwhile, officials maintain that Telangana has a robust testing mechanism that is trying to catch cases at the earliest. “India tested nearly 15 lakh individuals in a day and of that, Telangana alone has tested 1.26 lakh which is an achievement,” said Dr GS Rao.