Telangana COVID Centres, Hospitals Run Out of Corona Test Kits

HYDERABAD: Thousands of people waited for their RT-PCR test results at several hospitals and testing centres across Telangana, where Covid-19 patients continued to flock. This seems to have added to their woes.

As the Telangana state grapples with an ever-increasing Covid-19 caseload, the war on the ground appears to be intensifying. The Telangana government's large facilities with 1000 or more beds, such as the Telangana Institute of Medical Sciences and Gandhi Hospital, are also unable to handle the huge influx of patients.

On Wednesday, doctors at both hospitals reported a shortage of beds. Many private hospitals have already thrown up their hands.

TIMS, which bills itself as a model hospital capable of competing with the best, oddly lacks a high-resolution CT scanner. The machine's scans are an essential part of the Covid-19 identification and management process, so it's a must-have piece of equipment.

Although the number of patients diagnosed with Covid-19 has risen to over 46,000, many of those who queued up in the hundreds at Covid-19 testing centres were turned away because the centres ran out of test kits, primarily Rapid Antigen Test kits, which Telangana continues to rely on heavily. Despite their unreliability, it's well known that they're just around 50% accurate and plagued by false-positive findings.

Thousands of people who have given samples for the more accurate Rt-PCR test for Covid-19 diagnosis must wait two to three days for the results. The online system for tracking the test results, according to the staff collecting samples at some testing centres, was not functioning properly.

The system is now overburdened as more and more cases, and people line up for Rt-PCR tests. On Tuesday evening, the state's health department announced that 6,242 test results were still pending.

Some hospitals have started to issue SOS alerts to the government, indicating that they may soon run out of oxygen. The Gandhi Hospital staff has also sounded a warning bell, but the hospital superintendent said, “Whenever the liquid oxygen tanks get emptied, they are refilled.”