The Bombay high court has directed the Maharashtra government to disclose whether testing facilities for detecting Covid-19 infections are available in every district of the state.
A division bench of chief justice Dipankar Datta and justice KK Tated passed the order on Tuesday in response to a public interest litigation filed by a fisherman named Khalil Ahmad Hasanmiya Wasta, who complained about the lack of testing facilities in Ratnagiri district.
Click here for full Covid-19 coverage
The bench asked government pleader PP Kakade to furnish the information by Friday, when a hearing of the case is scheduled.
Wasta, who hails from Rajiwada area in Ratnagiri district, approached the high court through advocate Rakesh Bhatkar, and sought a direction to authorities to establish a full-fledged Covid-19 testing facility, approved by the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR), on May 7.
ICMR has approved a testing facility at BKL Walawalkar Rural Medical College at Ratnagiri. Wasta’s petition contended this facility is yet to become functional as it doesn’t have a certificate issued by the National Accreditation Board for Testing and Calibration Laboratories.
The petition further states the population of Ratnagiri is 16.15 lakh, and of the six hospitals in the district, two are reserved for treating Covid-19 patients.
It states that initially there were only seven Covid-19 cases in the district, and by the end of April, two of the patients died and the others recovered. There were no Covid-19 patients at the beginning of May.
{{/usCountry}}It states that initially there were only seven Covid-19 cases in the district, and by the end of April, two of the patients died and the others recovered. There were no Covid-19 patients at the beginning of May.
{{/usCountry}}The petition added that in the first week of May, authorities allowed local migration and granted passes to 44,531 people for entering Ratnagiri. At about the same time, about 30,000 people entered the district without permission, and as a result, 29,259 persons were kept in home quarantine till May 19 and 4,634 swabs were to be sent for testing, the petition said.
Of these swabs, 92 were found to be positive for the Coronavirus and the result of 426 tests is pending.
The 58-year-old fisherman’s petition stated the swabs are required to be sent for testing at Miraj in Single district – 178 km from Ratnagiri and 237 km from Dappli, the end point of the district.
It added that after the virus spread rapidly in different parts of Maharashtra, the testing facility at Miraj refused to accept swabs from Ratnagiri as it was overburdened.
Thereafter, the district collector instructed medical teams in the district on May 15 not to collect swabs of all migrant workers for testing.
Against this backdrop, Wasta asked the court to direct state authorities to make the testing facility at Ratnagiri functional at the earliest, as any delay in testing would be dangerous to human life.