E-Paper
Kerala high court nixes govt order on RT-PCR rate
The court after hearing both sides said there is merit in the contention of the petitioners and directed the government to talk to private laboratories and fix a new rate for RT-PCR Covid test in three weeks that would be economical for labs and patients.
The Kerala high court on Monday quashed the state government order reducing the charge of RT-PCR tests from ₹1700 to ₹500 in all private laboratories.
The directive was passed on a petition filed by the accredited molecular testing laboratories and another private lab complaining that the present test rate was leaving a big hole in their pockets.
The single bench of Justice R T Ravi, after hearing both sides, directed the government to take a decision on revising the rate after discussing it with owners of private laboratories. Petitioners contended that the decision was taken without hearing them and it was also a violation of natural justice.
They argued that the state government has no right to fix the price for the testing and cited the price of RT-PCR tests in neighbouring states to buttress their point. They also said criminal cases were slapped on some of the laboratories after they refused to do RT-PCR tests citing loss.
At this point the state government submitted a report stating that the cost of kits and related consumables have drastically come down and the argument of the private labs was not right. Test rate in Punjab is ₹415 while it costs ₹500 in Maharashtra, Haryana and Uttarakhand, it said.
The government said it arrived at the figure of ₹500 as per the advice of the Kerala Medical Services Corporation (KMSC) and all expenditures will come to ₹448.20 per test. The private labs, however, contended that rates arrived at by the KMSC were not justified as it makes purchases for the state in bulk and, therefore, can get the materials at a price lesser than the institutions which do not procure the same in such large volumes.
But the court after hearing both sides said there is merit in the contention of the petitioners and directed the government to talk to private laboratories and fix a new rate in three weeks that would be economical for labs and patients.
Meanwhile, the state reported 8850 Covid-19 new cases on Monday after 128,736 samples were tested with a test positivity rate of 11.82%. It also reported 149 deaths taking total fatalities to 25,526, according to the data released by the state health ministry. Active cases also reduced to 128,736.
The state has been reporting maximum cases in the country for almost four months. Cases peaked after Onam festival in August-end. The worried government had conducted a sero prevalence survey in July-August to find out exact level of infection and its results are expected by the weekend.
